When’s the best time to start eating healthy? After a heart attack. How about exercising? After you’re already overweight. The best time to stop smoking? After someone you know has lung cancer. When’s the best time to start talking to your teenager? After the cops call. And when’s the best time to buy homeowner’s insurance? As soon as you buy a house. Duh?
Yeah, we all seem to know when to buy insurance ... but it’s interesting and somewhat sad how we put off other important aspects of our lives, isn’t it?
Of course, not everyone waits until it’s too late to do what they should’ve done earlier. But as long as an issue doesn’t seem too urgent, a lot of us think we can get away with putting it off just a little bit longer. After all, we’re hoping it will go away on its own or maybe even fix itself.
But as you’ve probably already learned, it almost never does. And, no, I don’t truly believe that anyone thinks procrastinating is a good idea. But “waiting until tomorrow” is definitely easier than actually “starting something today.”
And even if you had good intentions of improving a situation along the way, the ability and opportunity to do so typically diminishes as time goes by.
So why do so many of us procrastinate? Is the “act of starting” really that painful? Or is it that you actually dread the activity itself? Or maybe it’s that you’re afraid that if you do start something, essentially you’re making a commitment to finish it.
Whether it’s doing paperwork, conducting performance reviews, returning phone calls or training your employees, the task isn’t going to disappear or get better unless you actually take care of it.
So when’s the best time to train your employees? Some would say that it’s after you know your employees aren’t going to quit and work for the neighbor. Others wait until times are good and the dairy is finally making money.
Unfortunately, employees can quit at any time and waiting until the economy turns around is like saying you’re going to wait until a cow produces more milk before you start feeding her.
How about getting people prepared for success as soon as you hire them and continue supporting their efforts until they leave? After all, if you’re going to pay them to help you make the dairy successful, you might as well show and teach them how to do so from the very start, right?
So what about you? What’s been stuck on your to-do list that keeps getting moved to the bottom of the pile? What are you waiting for? Today’s a great day to get it done! PD
Tom Wall
President
Dairy Interactive, LLC
tom@dairyinteractive.com
