Today I learned something new about myself. I was talking with a friend about my team leader meeting last Saturday and some of the challenges that I had in writing the case studies that I used as part of the meeting.
My friend shared with me that she really enjoyed the case studies and that they really helped her to think through some issues. The case studies were a problem based learning method that I used to get those attending the meeting to brainstorm about how to handle certain situations.
I realize now that when I have a task that is difficult for me I will often spend a great deal of time doing something that is more comfortable (i.e. research on the Internet about the task that I should be doing). What I should do instead is just deliver... instead of spending three hours researching how to write a case study, I should just spend 10 minutes writing something and then come back and edit in order to make it a good case study.
My friend shared with me that she really enjoyed the case studies and that they really helped her to think through some issues. The case studies were a problem based learning method that I used to get those attending the meeting to brainstorm about how to handle certain situations.
I explained to my friend that coming up with the case studies was actually a lot more difficult than she may have guessed. Even though it looked like the case studies could have been written in just five minutes, it actually took me three hours or more to come up with the content. As I was talking out loud about why it had taken so long, I realized that part of the reason is that I was reverting back to something that was more familiar to me.
I'm pretty familiar and comfortable at doing research online about different kinds of topics. When I was writing the case studies, I wasn't very confident in myself about the task at hand, so I spent a great deal of time online trying to research problem based learning and case studies.
I'm pretty familiar and comfortable at doing research online about different kinds of topics. When I was writing the case studies, I wasn't very confident in myself about the task at hand, so I spent a great deal of time online trying to research problem based learning and case studies.
I realize now that when I have a task that is difficult for me I will often spend a great deal of time doing something that is more comfortable (i.e. research on the Internet about the task that I should be doing). What I should do instead is just deliver... instead of spending three hours researching how to write a case study, I should just spend 10 minutes writing something and then come back and edit in order to make it a good case study.
Lesson learned: when I find myself reverting to something more comfortable (like doing research on the task I am trying to do) I should instead simply work on the task and then come back later to edit, or make it better.
Question: What comfort zone do you revert to when doing tasks that are difficult for you?
Question: What comfort zone do you revert to when doing tasks that are difficult for you?