Are you complacent? Have you ever been complacent? I have, and sometimes I still am. I try to avoid it, though.
What is complacency? Well, it is when you become satisfied with something. You get satisfied, you are no longer critical, you just accept it as it is and really do nothing to improve on it any longer. It’s not a good habit.
Generally, I find that when you get complacent with something, that things starts to slide. Why? Because you are no longer giving it your attention and improving on it. Even though it may well have been great at the time you became complacent, it will inevitably begin to go downhill when you no longer strive to improve it. There is not much choice in the matter, that’s just how it is.

Complacency will lead in only one direction
Ever heard the saying that if something is not improving, it’s getting worse? I have heard people say that kind of thing before, and it’s really true in many instances. If you are not complacent, you are paying attention to what is going on. You are striving for improvements. You are working, or at least thinking about the project at hand, and that work helps improve the project. Once you accept the project and become complacent, you stop working for improvement. As time goes by, you not only stop trying to improve in it, but generally you will also tend to ignore it, and the lack of attention can accomplish only one thing really… the project slides in importance, and also slides in it’s quality.

I have been Complacent
I have had this problem with some projects in the past. One in particular that comes to mind was a business that I still own. The business was really a big money earner. It had lots of customers, and it was an innovator compared to it’s competitors. But, because it was flying so high, I got complacent and gave the business less of my personal attention. No problem for a few years, the company kept doing well just through it’s own inertia. But, after a few years, things started to slide. At first, you don’t get concerned, you just figure that it’s an anomaly. Things will get better next month. Seven or eight months down the line, though, when things continue to slide, you know something is wrong. A bit longer and you realize that you’ve been complacent, and it cost you dearly.
Projects, businesses or whatever it is that you have become complacent about can be recovered, if you don’t let them slip too far. If you let them go for too long, though, and the slide proceeds too far, it will be difficult to recover, and take a long time and a lot of effort.
Perhaps my best advice to avoid complacency might sound a bit strange. What I would say is that you should step back from the project more often. But, for a short period of time. Don’t just let the project go, but strategically step back to refresh your mind. After being away from the project for a few weeks, when you return again you’ll have a fresh perspective, a new way to look at things. You’ll see things differently than you did before, when you were deep in the project. Stepping back for a refresher will allow you to refresh, see things differently, and innovate in ways that you couldn’t before, because you were too close to the project.
So, don’t get complacent. But, do step back for a refresher. That will help you sustain your interest, and do it through a new view.




Some of these things are OK to receive instantly. Some are annoying, though. If a very good friend got a new job and tweets you to tell you about it, that’s great, and I am sure you are very happy for your friend! However, we also get contacted by a lot of people that we barely know. Through cyberspace, we all have a lot of “passing friends” – people that we don’t really know in real life, yet we have met them in passing on the Internet. When a person like that tweets you to let you know what he just ate for dinner… well, sometimes it is nothing but an annoying disturbance in our lives.
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