I made Three Important Mistakes fairly recently that underscored the importance of Paying Attention to Details for me. I will share them here with you, and explain a) why everything worked out okay, and b) what I learned from the experience.

Ink Stink
I love the Staples website. What I love even more about it is that you get free delivery from your local Staples if you order more than $50. This was perfect for me a few weeks ago when I needed to buy printer ink for an Epson 2200. Clickety-click, clickety-click, and it's done, delivered to my door a few days later. But what I failed to realize until after I had carefully unwrapped all the cartridges and started trying to place them in the printer, is that I had ordered ink for an Epson 2400. BIG DIFFERENCE. The cartridges didn't fit, and I sat there scratching my head like an ape until I realized I had made a $125 mistake.

But everything worked out okay when I called Staples, told them about the situation, and surprisingly found a willing customer service representative who not only refunded my money and sent a driver to pick up the ink, she volunteered to order me the correct cartridges and have them delivered for free the next day!

Lesson: really take the time to review your invoice before you hit "CONFIRM"! That, and it doesn't hurt to ask.

Battery Drain
The morning of a recent wedding gig I had, I decided to change the batteries in my flash to make sure I had enough juice to last me a good while. In went the rechargables, and I hit the "ON" button: nothing. Okay, I thought, I must've used those up. In went set #2 of rechargables, and I hit the "ON" button: nothing. Whoa! In went set #3 of rechargables, and still no juice! I had to leave in less than an hour--there was no way I could recharge in time.

Luckily, I usually keep on hand a HUGE stash of emergency alkalines. I brought them along, and the wedding went smoothly, but I definitely learned to make sure to charge my batteries the night before a gig!

Auction Debaucle
A long while back, I had my eyes on a second Minolta Maxxum 7000 camera body. Someone had given me a first, and I was looking for more lenses and accessories so I could have a backup camera for my film weddings. Ebay was my friend--I found a number of good listings with folks looking to sell large lots of lenses & nifty accessories for the flash (which was what I wanted). So, I bid, and bid generously. For $200, I had won exactly what I wanted.>

Or so I thought. A week or so later, a box arrived at my door, from Israel (whoops, should've checked the listing!), with tons of Minolta lenses and stuff I didn't recognize from the listing. I was ticked. I took a picture, and started a dialogue with the Ebay seller, trying to either a) get my money back, or b) figure out what he or she had done with the gadgets I thought I had purchased. I ran into both a language barrier and a knowledge barrier--the seller struggled to find out what was wrong, and didn't know cameras enough to understand what was missing.

I ended up giving up. All in all, my situation wasn't that bad. I had a whole bunch of lenses that I hadn't really asked for, but that were really nice. And even though I didn't get the accessory that I wanted, I had what I needed. Plus, a year after I made the purchase, I ended up re-selling the equipment kit (and more) for a hefty profit!

Again, though, in future auctions I confirmed necessary details with the seller before bidding on Ebay!

The Final Word

In all these situations, I looked back and realized that one of the major things that made me skip the vital details was this: I was in a rush.

Poor decisions are made when you're in a rush, folks. Stop rushing, step back, and check those details.

...

EDIT: At 3:21 PM on March 12th, Benjamin had the courtesy to tell me that all my formatting was getting lost when Google Reader picked up my RSS feed. I checked my entries, and noticed that I had been neglecting to use <p> tags, instead relying on MovableType's autoformatting. This was a Bad Idea and Very Lazy on my part. I hereby insert my foot in my mouth, eat my own words, and take that bitter pill that is my own advice.

I don't know about you, but in a given day, there are vast quantities of menial tasks to manage in a given day. Time and task management has always been a shtick of mine, and the fact that I can list principles of effectiveness is just proof of how much of a huge nerd I am. But they're helpful! So here they are, directly from the Nerd's mouth. Whether you work in an office or not, I hope you find these techniques that I use helpful in some way.

develop a system for sorting e-mail

E-mail can be one of the most overwhelming things to deal with on a daily basis--messages pile up, because it's difficult to figure out what to do with e-mail. On the surface, it seems like what you need to do is simply reply to everything. Not so. All e-mail solicits you in three ways: information (no action), questions (reply), or a request (perform a task).

So, before I even reply to anything, I sort my e-mail. Any message that I flag gets put into a Smart Folder I've created in my Mail application called "REPLY / ACTION". Self-explanatory, right? Then, I reply to things as needed, and record things to do in my planner, leaving a message flagged if an action hasn't been performed yet.

Because in my last post I'm sure I sounded like the "I've got it all together and let me tell you how to run your life" that I'm not. So I've decided to write up my favorite formulas for procrastination.

checking e-mail for no reason

"Someone, anyone, please give me a reason not to do work!"

google reader/analytics, livejournal friends, and facebook

Looking at statistics on Google Analytics, juicy articles on Google Reader, or the latest updates on my friends in Facebook or Livejournal prove to be my stalwart procrstinatory distractors. It's just more interesting than whatever I'm trying to avoid.

reading in the bathroom

When nature calls, I bring reading materials to extend my absence from doing work under the pretense of "expanding my mind."

taking care of any other business besides what needs doing

Otherwise known as "productive procrastination." Most often happens when I'm at work. I'm getting things done--just not the top-priority things that I should be doing. More often than not, I have a myriad of reasons for avoiding the top-priority task, and when I run out of lesser things to do, I must confront the beast, or move on to another form of procrastination

putting things away

Related to the previous one, but focused on tidying the workspace or home. Tidying is inherently satisfying, and gives a feeling of accomplishment that cannot be achieved even when tackling the gargantuan project that I'm trying to avoid. It's much more concretely rewarding to look at my clean desk, and go "ahhhh," than to e-mail an irate client or call a vendor to try to resolve a problem.

writing

One of the reasons that I procrastinate is that I have too much on my brain. Whatever's on my mind is distracting me from the task at hand. Sometimes it's inane babble that I just feel like getting on paper, or perhaps it's a big decision I have to make, or maybe it's just that I'd rather be writing my own thoughts down than working hard at something else.. Either way, writing is a staple in my procrastinating toolkit.

And you may have already guessed that I wrote out this entire thing because I was procrastinating.