I Hesitate to Commit

At work my boss this week my boss gave me some quotes about me. We solicit feedback twice a year from co-workers and use that to evaluate how employees are doing. This goes up and down the chain, so everyone from the CEO down gets anonymous quotes.

A few of mine were that I am pleasant and helpful and always looking to do things when people ask.

My boss laughed, and said those obviously weren’t from her. They weren’t because she has to struggle with me to get me to do new things. I get a lot done and don’t need management, but I hesitate to tackle new projects or agree to get them done. She has to ask me more than a few times and remind me if I haven’t committed.

Why?

Here’s a great example of why:

Hard Earned Lessons Spots - Raw

I wrote an article recently on disaster recovery. One of the marketing people wanted some video ad spots to use. A 30s one and a 1 minute one. She asked me, and I said I might be able to. My boss asked, and reminded me a few times. I didn’t commit because of time. I think she, probably everyone, wondered how hard is it to make a 30s spot?

During out meeting she reminded me that I had said I’d try to get it done by this Friday (today). I explained I’d try, but not promises.

I took a 2 paragraph script, 10 things and an opening and closing and had to work with it for 30-45 minutes. I practiced it, timed it, realized it was long and had to cut it to a few versions. I finally felt comfortable and loaded it into the prompter.

I went to shoot it, thinking this would be a 5 minute effort like my podcasts. It was 12+ minutes of video, along with some setup to move things around, and then a nice 30 minutes of editing to cut out the green corner, check audio, cut out the mistakes, etc. and just send the raw 3 versions over.

With the issues in loading the video to the computer, this was 2+ hours out of my day and frustrating, but also funny.