Surrounded by idlers and loafers or How to deal with lazy people

Posted on September 30, 2007
Filed Under Coaching

Jack is a good guy, he’s energetic and always looks busy. Always involved and works hard. He just can’t stand Nick. Jack says Nick is lazy.

bee The guys work in the same office in one room and usually meet daily. Jack is a project manager and he’s responsible for several simultaneous projects. Multi-tasking, working late nights and sometimes even weekends is a valid brief description of his job. Nick is a sales person and is usually busy cold-calling, organizing meetings, publishing ads and working on tenders. Nick is a nice friendly guy who usually works from 9 to 5, rarely staying late.

If you are like Jack, it’s a typical situation when you are set to believe that you are surrounded by lazy people and it’s only you yourself who’s doing the work.

Although it may be the case that you’re loaded with all the work, the problem actually is not that other people are lazy. The problem is that you are overloaded.

Here is a simple advice that should help you weigh and improve the situation.

1. Allocate up to 10-15 minutes, take a piece of paper and write down a list of your major tasks to be done by the end of the week.

2. Now go through the list starting from the top and mark each item with a “bother-index”: assign low, medium or high depending on how much troubles and efforts it may cost you to get this task done. Your marks could be “B:L”, “B:M” or “B:H” respectively.

3. Go over the list again and assign “stress-index” — it’s a bit different from bother-index and is a measure of emotional exhaustion and frustration that work item causes in you. Mark each item in your list with “S:L”, “S:M” or “S:H” depending on where on the low-medium-high stress scale it’s located for you.

4. Select those items which have the highest B and S index. Outline these items.

5. Think whether and how could you eliminate these selected tasks. For example, maybe you could delegate, redirect, outsource or even cancel at least some of them.

I think you should get the idea.

Have a great time and keep work-live balance to avoid burnout!

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