Set some end of year goals

Years these days! They keep going faster and faster, Sonny Jim Crockett!

Back when your humble correspondent was a young Taskmaster, those long hot summer holidays in a fibro beach shack used to drag on forever.

These days, you hardly have an opportunity to recover from the hangover that comes with toasting the New Year with a Brandy Old-Fashioned (or perhaps seven) and it’s already almost time to put the tinsel up again for another Christmas!

Speaking of which, remember in the good ‘ole days when we had clearly defined holidays? These days, Jolly Old Saint Nick barely puts the sleigh away and already the hot cross buns are on sale at the local bakery and the local florist begins advertising Valentine’s Day roses!

Oh, and they’re not the real hot crossed buns either – the kind with real citrus peel! No, after years of complains by constitutionally weak whiners, they’re now choc-marshmallow fudge filled! Seriously, what’s wrong with a little lemon rind now and then?!

And you know what all this talk of holidays breeds in a workforce, or the soft, chocolate flavoured marshmallow bun-eating intestinal fortitude lacking general populace at large? Idleness! Indolence! Sloth! Dormancy! Torpor! Otiosity! And, perhaps worst of all, dilly-dallying!

The seven deadly sins of a productive work ethic, character and constitution!

Being October, unless you’re in hospitality or retail, your staff will begin slowing down for the year as Christmas approaches! So will suppliers or possible customers!

In many office jobs, before you know it, the depths of November or December will hit. You’ll be stuck with a pottering workforce loitering near the kettle and vegetating at their desks while mentally imagining stuffed roast turkeys or dreaming of their forthcoming tropical island holidays while complaining how hot the weather is today!

Now, do you the lassitude and languor of an office in a collective listlessness, where your apathetic subordinates day dream of sipping Piña Coladas and singing Huzzah to Otahiti while wearing a Hula Skirt?

Or do you want to pre-emptively torpedo their torpidity and get them working ‘til the very last minute, as you pay them to do?!

If it’s the latter, you need to set some goals and targets for the end of the year!

These goals must be specific. They must be measurable. They must be attainable – at least with a little elbow grease. They must be realistic. And they must be time related and ideally achieved by the end of the year!

Don’t let your staff sleepwalk into the New Year – choose some targets and set them now!

Don’t tolerate shiftlessness or hebetude in your workforce – give them something to aim for instead!

Get it done – today!