Have you ever noticed that scheduling can become difficult around holidays?

It is funny how holidays are typically one day events; however they are often used as excuses for procrastination. Recently, I was working to schedule a meeting with several executive level professionals and it became comical searching for a date to meet. I couldn’t help but notice that everyone in the group was totally comfortable and quite adept at putting off meetings.

Here is how the dialogue went:

Scheduler A: “How about Thursday?”

Scheduler B: “I will just be getting in from Vacation”

Scheduler A: “OK, how about the following Tuesday?”

Scheduler C: “That’s Memorial Day Week”

Scheduler D: “Yeah, and I think we have corporate in the following week for a couple of days.”

And on and on it went!

It seems as though people use one day events as excuses for the weeks on either side of the one day event. They are either preparing for the one day event or they are recovering from the one day event. My suggestion is that we allow holidays to be holidays, but not to make them the scape goat for a lack of productivity or commitment.

Please do not take this as a Scrooge type post. Trust me that I am a believer in celebrating all things worth celebrating, especially holidays. However, as a general rule people aren’t as busy as they claim to be; so I say step it up and get things done!

Have you ever experienced anything like this? I would love to hear your thoughts, please share them with me on twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook.