There is one problem that too many employees and freelancers have. It has three characteristics: it’s widespread and pervasive; it prevents the boss or client from trusting you with almost anything, and it is so hard for anyone (even your boss or client) to articulate. These three factors, taken together, almost always lead to your being fired; that problem is “sloppiness.”
First, let’s define our terms. By “sloppiness” I mean regularly making errors on the simple, small, and seemingly minor stuff (as well as on the big stuff.) Typos are one type of sloppiness. Forgetting certain papers for forms is another. Accidentally deleting or throwing out documents is another type. And there are many more. There is no limit to the forms of sloppiness.
Here’s the problem with sloppiness, it kills people’s ability to trust you to do anything without deep oversight. And if they’re going to give you deep oversight—what’s the point of your job? They may as well do it themselves or hire someone else who doesn’t require such a serious time commitment on their part to manage.
Would you trust someone who is sloppy, with anything? Would you keep in your employment a chef who, every time you go past the kitchen, you see him dropping the chicken on the floor, or accidentally breaking eggs or putting the flame on the stove too high? You’d fire him in an instant!
The only reason why most people who are sloppy aren’t fired in an instant is that most employers tend to give the employee the benefit of the doubt and try to make it work. But it always comes back to kill you.
To make it worse, it’s really, really hard for human beings to tell others that they’re being sloppy. That’s why the solution is almost always to fire them, not to try to teach them to become less sloppy.
If you suspect you may be sloppy in your work, that’s probably the most important aspect of your professionalism that you have to focus on improving. Here are a few ways to try to turn yourself into a non-sloppy person:
- Go slower in your work, including reading slower. That means reading every word, not skimming or skipping, as well as writing slower.
- When you work, don’t be mentally distracted, just really think about the task at hand. If you need to turn off your phone or otherwise avoid distractions, go for it.
- Put things you do away and come back to it the next day, with a clear mind, before showing it to others.
There is a meta reason why you may be sloppy in your work: because you don’t care about it. In general, humans tend to be sloppier about what they don’t care about, and less sloppy about things they do care about. So maybe the real question is to ask yourself: “Why do I not care about this work?” And if you don’t, why are you doing it? What can you do that could pay you the same, or more, and that is realistically achievable by you, and that you will care about? If nothing exists that satisfies all those criteria (including the “realistic”) qualification, then ask yourself, why are your expectations the way they are, and can you and should you change your own expectations about life? Alas, diving into these questions is the topic for many other works, not this one!
