There are obvious distractions we choose to participate it: Minesweeper, YouTube, and so forth. While you may lose a few minutes of each day to these trappings, for the most part, it is done in the conscience part of your mind: you now what your are doing. I am not going to argue we shouldn’t let these distractions into our lives; we all need a respite now and then.
However, there are other distractions. Yes, these distractions are more dangerous in part because you may lose more than a few minutes (likely more than a few hours or days). Rather, though, they are most dangerous because they are camouflaged; we don’t know they are distractions because we are convinced we are effectively solving a problem.
There are several, distinctly personal reasons we might pursue these distractions (maybe it is more fun, maybe it is the path of least resistance) but that is something best discussed with our personal Dr. Melfis. When embarking on a new project, what we can do is make absolute consideration for what we are about to do and why we are about to do it. In its simplest form, this is look-before-you-leap planning. Truly, it is look-before-you-leap-because-you-may-invest-a-lot-of -time-and-money-and-end-up-right-where-you-started-or-worse.
If you have customer service issues, consider multiple angles: improve employee morale, adjust policies to empower employees to respond directly to their customers, modify delivery procedures, adjust return policies. Take a deeper look. You may have a customer that cannot be satisfied. If that is the case, should you undertake an entire project or make one phone call to the customer to say thank you and good-bye?
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