Stop Hitting Snooze

Mary Aquino

For a very long time, I thought that the snooze button was my best friend. I knew exactly how many snoozes I had before I’d be late for work if I didn’t get up right away. Five snoozes. And then I married my husband…who suggested instead of snoozing the alarm five times, why not set the alarm for 30 minutes later and not snooze it at all. It was more of a request than a suggestion. Actually, it was a strongly worded request because he woke up every time my alarm went off, and he pointed out how it was slightly unkind to wake him up at the crazy hour I tend to get up at. So I affected a new wake-up process. Alarm goes off, I get up. No snooze involved. It works famously for me...and him.

That whole scenario shines an important light on something I have been guilty of in my personal and professional life. Procrastination. Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow, right? Only me? Whether you admit to it or not, you might procrastinate about something at some time. It’s okay.

Ultimately, there are tasks you can’t put off forever. Take, for example, year-end tasks. What do you do to prepare for end-of-year? Do you have a process documented? Are those process tasks specific and time-bound? If so, you can’t snooze them. Consider making a list of your tasks and identifying the who and when (who does it and when does it need to happen) in your policies & procedures guide.

Maybe you’re looking for a little guidance on how to prioritize and document your processes or how to align your year-end tasks to functions within Financial Edge NXT. Blackbaud University’s newest Feature Focus class, Financial Edge NXT: Feature Focus - Defining Year-End Processes is all about how to start documenting, improving, and aligning your year-end processes to areas within Financial Edge NXT.

In this 90-minute session, you’ll see how easy it is to stop hitting that snooze button and wake up your year-end process!

Elizabeth Perron

@Mary Aquino, I can appreciate a good procrastination process being changed in favor of improving a relationship and taxes!!!