Procrastination solution, sorted with my grandmother

The answer to my progressive problem of common procrastination, a chronic lifestyle disease shared by so many of my generation, lies where I never thought. With my unsophisticated grandmother. You see, grandma, 'Bamma', as we admiringly being referring to her since we could speak, never procrastinates. She never puts what she could do today for tomorrow. Or what she could do now, for later.

'Bamma' - shangaan for mothers (yes, in plural to pile that respect) - is of a generation that toiled. A nation that got it right when it came to the work ethic, to personal triumph, to meeting those goals, to delivering, to commitment - personal loyalty. The old woman was born in 1933.

I'm not surprised that the old woman wakes up nearly at the same early-bird-catches-the-fattest-worm hour each day (unless ill-health pins her down to bed - genuinely). She often says, "I can't just sit around with my hands and do nothing. I need to do something". More like her hands are itching, that she must scratch them with some chore. Some work.

She is just like my wife's grandmother, Mmalasi, of the same generation, who died three months ago at 97 - born in 1910. She was still keeping her early bird lifestyle and work ethic. She mantained the zero-procrastination, zero-laziness attitude to her last days.

My generation. Me to be precise. I postpone on my big dream today, chronically. That defining work. I put it off for tomorrow. And like grandma always says, "tomorrow is promised no man". And in deed, that tomorrow to assault on my dreams, to put in the work ethic, the hours, the sweat, never comes. Because it is not promised me. Not in the sense that I would die today. But in the realistic sense that what I couldn't do today. What I'm postponing today, I'll just as much procrastinate tomorrow.

But it is definitely promised my grandma because she itchces everyday, every hour, to get hold of something she can work on. She will either be sewing something, grabbing that broom and sweeping up the crab in the yard and more. And it is this sweeping, as I saw my mom sweep this morning, that I thought I should do what Robin Sharma said in his international bestseller book The Greatness Guide: 'Do a clean sweep of your life'.

And that's exactly what I've started doing since I came to the village yesterday. Reflect, intro-inspect, preserve the good, burn the bad, and sweep 'em. Then attempt to duplicate the spirit of the generation of 'Bamma'.

And perhaps I'll start on writing that first novel. Write that business plan on my women's lifestyle magazine. Go on my first international trip. Buy that dictaphone to do research on my novel. Buy that business plan writing book. Wake up at 5am as I always aspired to. Go to gym as much as I desire to. Go on those runs the way I use to at Rhodes. Do that Postgrad Diploma in Marketing Management. Do that MA. Make those calls to lure my first PR clients to my company. In short, to demonstrate some commitment to my best life by doing today, what I could do today. Doing now, what I could do now.

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"Judge of a man by his questions, rather than by his answers." - Voltaire

The all time only traffic solution

Traffic is bad. Traffic has economic costs. It has emotional costs. It has time costs. It has all sorts of costs including messing up your car as it snails at the lowest gear each day guzzling more than the fuel it should had it been faster. But traffic, on South African routes to work, is part of our lives and is here to stay. Costly, drama queen-styled solutions have been invented to cap it to no avail and still some are being undertaken which, unfortunately, will fail too. Well, I propose a cheap and saving solution that can nip traffic for good.

The solution, ironically, lies in a problem. The problem of office space. Whilst I worked at the Sunday Times, there was constant talk about the lack of well accommodating office space. At the Sandton PR agency I worked for, there was some hussling and squeezing about fitting in every project-religious worker comfortably so they can be productive. At my current company, Unisa and the Centre for Business Management, space is a mother of all headaches, amidst the humugus buildings arrayed on that hilltop.

Let me cut to the chase. Imagine that at least 50 percent of the office workers were given the non-cost attached incentive of working from home? Imagine this was done on a weekly, bi-weekly or monthly rotational basis to allow the other 50 percent to swap the incentive. They only come to the office when they need to, and this wouldn't be at the religious time that everyone heads on the extremely clogged roads - it may be at 10am, at 11am or any given time just to come to a team meeting or to pick up a new project on delivery of another.


Such a scheme would work wonders. Traffic would be nipped in the butt. Production would be upped in some way. Hell, in my company of the future that I'm sitll wet dreaming about 80 percent (if not all) of the workers will work from home, from coffee shops, from their mothers homes, from hospital canteens, from gym from anywhere you can get network access to the internet to fast track communication.

I don't see any reason why this is not done already. On a larger scale at least - for I suspect it may be done by other companies ran by smarter CEOs and HR Directors.

Why would it work:

• Because people love incentives that taste like this and working from the comfort of their home would be far more exciting than in the office. Just hand out mobile internet cards and a laptop to them, if they need them
• Bosses can get more production because somebody left on their own - experienced Tom, Dick and Marry of course - will be compelled to feel more obliged to submit work on time than somebody feeling that having come to the office means you have come to work, whereas we know most have just come to galavant and drink coffee
• It could have a tremendous savings both on the running resources of the company and reduce the meaningless chatter that achieves nothing
• There would be less piggybacking. You work from home, solo or co-ordinating with anyone via new communication technologies, you become more accountable and feel you can't let down your team
• Because it would simply be a lifestyle of the future for such a company

Counting on the Gautrain and other montrous politicians wet dreams that only cause waste and sow a perfect corruption platform will not kick the bad traffic phenomena. And with the rapid development of stacked townhouses everywhere, we are bound to experience the India type of traffice on our non-developing, non-widening South African roads .

It'll be simple ideas and methods that safe the day. Just get the workers to show their project timeliness and deliverables, then let them go work from home. You may be amazed at the accountability production - it may be the same as at the office or even better.

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"Judge of a man by his questions, rather than by his answers." - Voltaire