We have our 86,400 seconds for the day.  We have prioritized what to work on, and we start our day.

Now we all know the day may start one way, but it is always sidetracked somewhere by other people’s priorities.  I have an ongoing debate with myself if instant messaging, or affectionately known by the term IM, is a tool of good or evil, because it is too easy for people to contact you and sidetrack you to their priority.  Most of the time, I do not mind the quick IM’s and able to take a couple of minutes to get a priority done for someone.  Love helping people.  Every once in a while, I have to explain to the user to send me an e-mail, because I cannot work on it right at this moment and do not want to lose their request by closing the IM window and forgetting about it.

E-mail is my preferred method on keeping communication going and prioritizing items.  Have it in writing, so you know what you deliver is exactly what is written.  We have so many projects and high workloads that we get things jumbled before we can make the items in the e-mail a priority.

I was on a meeting a number of years ago with a manager and another co-worker from our group.  We agreed on what needed to be done.  We agreed on the priority.  We took steps to deliver.  We even described it in an e-mail.  The manager then went to his boss who sent it up the chain of command and said the agreed upon solution was not what was discussed, and we were off target.  In this case, he felt it was more important to state the solution was not what he agreed too, but he was truly covering his tail due to a problem occurring in the first place and deflecting all the blame upon others.

From my standpoint, what is important is the end product and not deflecting blame or pointing fingers.  We have a priority to deliver the best work we can.  We determine what is important and focus upon that priority.