#98. Learn not to be a flake.

What is a flake? According to the Urban Dictionary it is:


An unreliable person; someone who agrees to do something, but never follows through. Examples:


1. John called in sick to work again today. He's such a flake.


2. Mary said she would do the research for our project, but it's been a week and she hasn't done a thing. She's such a flake.

There is something within in me that will not allow flakiness (inherited trait from my father). I believe it is a complete and total annoyance with the waste of any time. Time is precious and for me mostly scheduled so having to either wait or completely reorganize or reschedule something due to someone’s flakiness would just plain piss me off.

Unreliability is not excusable and often people with ‘flake’ reputations in my book are written off if they are repeat offenders. Once or twice fine. 3 times = write off.

I believe in staying ahead of the ball, being 100% efficient. Why waste time? Why put time and effort into planning something to be left hanging at the last minute to attempt to make alternate plans? And having to have a backup for unreliable plans means that you shouldn’t have made the plans in the first place!

As you can probably tell I am not a delegator and I have some control issues. I like things to be done properly the first time and on time -hence why anything with a deadline at work is not given to anyone else to complete. Also hence my love for Microsoft OneNote. Say you are working on a project with someone and they tend to not be reliable – create a Notebook and keep all the files in one place accessible to both/all parties. So much easier than having to attempt to contact the individual to ask for a file to be sent, or just plain waiting it out. The added bonus is that if any changes have been made to anything since the last time you logged in it will show you – so you don’t miss a thing. The downside is the lack of awareness and price of this wonderful product. Think communication aspects of Google Wave, but better.

So while my tolerance for flakes will never change, my coping with them mechanisms will continue to technically advance!