What's Your Reliability Rating?

 How many times do you hit the bulls eye when you make a promise or a commitment?  Are you the person others call on when the sky is falling?  If you're not satisfied with your reliability rating, maybe it's time to make some changes.  My greatest shortcoming is my tendency to promise too much.  This is not good when others are depending on you.  Here are some lessons I learned about reliability...

1. Say No.  What a relief it is to be honest about your abilities and time constraints.  If you're overburdened because you said yes to every request, your reliability rating will drop off the scale.  You may lose a promotion.  It's not worth it to over-promise.
2. Offer alternatives when you face unreasonable requests.  When someone comes to you for help and you know you can't get the job done, ask this, "Would you be able to allocate more resources so that I can accommodate you?"  Or, "Would you mind if we extend the deadline so that I can give your request enough time to handle it properly without cutting corners?"
3. Check your reliability rating at the end of each day.  Ask yourself, what can I do better tomorrow to better fulfill my obligations?  Your goal is continuous improvement.

One area of my life that needs more reliability is vacation time.  This means saying no to other projects or assignments that are getting in the way.  It means finding alternatives that are within my budget so I can stay true to my debt reduction goals.  It also means reviewing what I'm doing now to plan my vacations and treating these plans as high priority items, not broken promises.

What area of your life are you planning to focus on so you can increase your reliability rating?  I look forward to reading your comments below.  Have a great day.  Thanks for visiting.