my assignment

My B2B (business-to-business) company sells hi-tech equipment to customers in a variety of different industries and is therefore looking for tradeshows to go to in order to get the company's name out and to show people the product. My assignment is to basically find out where and when the tradeshows are. This sounds much more simple than it actually is.

I am going to be focusing on three industries (at least for now...). I must research numerous different professional organizations, associations, and clubs within these industries. Most of these organizations operate at both a national and state (or "area") level. I must contact every chapter and determine whether they have a convention or tradeshow where my company can either send a speaker or be a sponsor. I will using a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet to keep track of chapters' and contacts' information, the number of events per year, whether we would be able to get involved, how much everything costs...

I'm a little nervous because this is the kind of thing that I could end up either doing really well or just really poorly. If it doesn't go well at first, or if I get overwhelmed, I can just see myself pushing it off and avoiding completing it. Which, I obviously can't do. My plan is to break up the assignment to make it less overwhelming and more enticing or else I'll end up looking like this:

I would have benefited from UCSD's Learn at Lunch lecture: "Just-in-Time Management: Instant Cure for Overwhelm" given by Nanci McGraw. The following describes my problems perfectly.

If you really “wanna,” says McGraw, you can avoid the dual pitfalls of perfectionism and procrastination that hold many people back. If everything’s got to be perfect before a task moves forward, for example, it might never get done. Sometimes, says McGraw, “pretty good is good enough,” especially if the alternative is inaction or lack of progress. Procrastination’s not always a bad thing, she says, again citing her father’s Western wisdom: “Some things deserve every amount of procrastination you can muster up, ‘cuz you hadn’t ought to be doin’ ‘em anyway.” (WOW!) But at work, putting things off now usually creates larger problems and more work later.

So, I guess when I'm trying to tackle this assignment, I'll remind myself that I just have to get it done. First place to avoid procrastination and perfectionism: drafting a really good letter to send to all these people.