Operating Against Our Own Best Self-Interest…Worklife…

Every so often, a person will ask me “what can I do to be happier in life?”  After many years of considering this question, I’ve come down to one great piece of advice: become aware of the ways you’re operating against your own best self-interest.  Personally, I think this is a human tendency built into the core of everyone’s being, almost like a genetic predisposition.  The challenge is to manage this tendency, and not to let it rule you.

All in all, becoming aware of our ways of engaging in self-sabotage is the best way I know of to move ahead in life creatively. Over the next three posts, let’s focus one-by-one on particular arenas of life in which we can wind up operating against our own best self-interest: in our worklife, our personal relationshipsand our finances… all regions of our lives in which the tendency to “get in your own way” can have significant and dramatic consequences.

Think for a moment about your worklife and working environment, are you happy and satisfied in it?  Do you work with a team, just a few others, or by yourself?  Do you work from home or have to be at the office each day, or a combination of both? Each of these different options opens the door for ways we can wind up getting in our own ways.

A common form of self-sabotage is procrastination.  Why do people procrastinate?  Many reasons:

• lots of folks like to think of themselves as “working best under pressure”, so they put off beginning tasks until close to the due date, when they’ll have to rush, and the possibility for errors is greater.  The tension this generates often pushes us to procrastinate.
• where there’s procrastination, there’s often resentments, since dragging your feet on a project usually includes an unspoken comment about disliking the project.
• fears of being discovered as not as competent as one likes to portray oneself, putting off the “day of reckoning” when the project comes due.  Fears of failure often accompany the issue of competence, so the person puts off getting the project underway, and the longer this goes on the greater the tension becomes.
• volunteering for a project is easy; completing the project is hard. Many folks begin a project with enthusiasm and energy but lapse into dragging when the true scope of labor required for the project becomes evident. It’s then that a person’s durability and perseverance gets challenged, and it’s easy to put off applying oneself until later and later.
• feeling insecure about oneself often becomes evident in the workplace environment, where producing and turning out a quality product are requirements.  If an individual isn’t sure about his abilities to actually get the job done, procrastination is a common way to stave off having to face reality.
• a huge contributor to procrastination is becoming too perfectionistic.  Wanting each step in the project to be “totally flawless” can paralyze a person into chronic hesitations instead of simply moving forward and applying oneself.
• avoidance of unpleasant tasks. Most of us tend to apply ourselves to tasks we like much more easily than those we don’t like. However, this can lead to leaving the most difficult or most complicated tasks for last; certainly the task we find the most distasteful, and it’s only a matter of time until our “to do” list is full of tasks we dislike addressing.

In most work environments we have to get along with each other in order to turn out the best possible product.  If one person’s procrastination has a negative effect on a co-worker – like not completing assignments on time – then the stage is set for staff conflicts.  One individual’s lateness in completing their section of the project triggers other staffer’s lateness completing theirs, and so it goes down the line.  Ultimately the entire team suffers, and often the problem can be traced back to the initial procrastinator. Resentments, blaming, and overall lack of team harmony are classic results of procrastination.

Another form of self-sabotage is arriving late to work. Nothing is so obvious as lateness, and when done chronically it’s easy to get a reputation for “he’s always late”. Where does the tendency to be late originate from, and what does it mean?

• disrespect…falling into thinking that other’s agendas are not really all that important, that your agenda is the most important one.
• entitlement… thinking that the rules don’t really apply to you, that you are special and therefore justified in showing up late.
• poor planning…being disorganized and complicating your life by not arranging schedules in realistic and workable fashion, which leads to personal overload, last-minute cancellations, and lateness.  Clearly, whenever we find ourselves lapsing into chronic lateness, we have to stop and ask ourselves “What am I doing?  What’s happening to me?”

 

Accepting a post you’re not ready for is another way we can disrupt our progress forward.  This is often a difficult matter to evaluate, since in the workplace it’s good to make a habit of taking some chances, stretching ourselves, and shooting for ambitious goals.  However, when moving up in our status and responsibility level at work, do we ask for the input of others prior to applying for the more challenging position?  Do we ask co-workers and supervisors who we trust and respect “what do you think about me applying for this role?”  “Do you think I’m ready for this new position, do you think I can do the job?”  Clearly, this would be a difficult thing for anyone to ask; doing so will most likely make one feel vulnerable and exposed.  However, getting the honest impressions and feedback of trusted colleagues can either confirm our own assessments of our readiness…or confirm our own self-doubts about our readiness, which we’re often reluctant to admit to ourselves.  In the long run, we definitely want to avoid setting ourselves up for a failure, which we can easily do if we overestimate our abilities.  It’s really a strength and an asset to know and respect your limitations!

In my next post we’ll look at some typical ways we operate against our own best self interest in our personal relationships…and I think you’ll find the items we discuss also apply to the work environment and link up neatly with what this post has been addressing.