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If you’re like most IT professionals, you have a gaggle of unfinished projects, and perhaps even have your boss breathing down your neck because his or her email isn’t working quite right, or customers are complaining about the company website. Maybe you’re behind getting the backup system procedures documented, or haven’t gotten the Administrative Assistant a second screen so they have more screen real estate, or how about those server upgrades that you keep putting off?

Here are few options people commonly use; I know that I myself have tried them all over the years, with varying degrees of success:

First Option:  Wait until next month.

Procrastination is a part of all of our business lives (especially since few of us can get everything completely done every week). The problem is, sometimes what we procrastinate on is something the boss views as a higher priority, even though it might mean not getting some other stuff done that he or she will be even more upset about. Remember, non-IT managers and owners often don’t have any idea how long a project will take; they just want to see results.

Second Option:  Use your Saturdays and Sundays (and maybe evenings) to catch up on work.

I have done this myself, and have to say your personal life does suffer. You work all week long, and then on Saturday, when you really want to catch up on some much-needed sleep, you find yourself in the office toiling away. The same thing happens on Sunday. You tell yourself it will be only a couple of hours. Eight hours later, you realize you’ve completely lost track of time and finally decide it’s time to go home. Life’s pretty short to live that way for long.

Third Option: Implore your management to hire another person.

Of course, the problem with that is that payroll costs can make or break a company, so most savvy business people will wait until it’s absolutely positively necessary before hiring additional personnel. Plus, sometimes sales, especially in this economy, may be going down at the same rate that IT projects are increasing; they’re not always related. And getting more personnel when sales are dropping is a difficult request to make, much less to get approved.

Fourth Option:  Have Iris Professional Services, a company that knows and understands the nuts & bolts of your business, lend a hand.

At far less cost than additional personnel, with the benefit of years of combined experience on just about everything IT, Iris can make any IT professional more effective. We help to understand your company through a service called “Network Discovery”. A Network Discovery allows you to know and understand the good, bad, and ugly of what is going on with your servers, desktops, printers, all the myriad of equipment that you might take for granted, but haven’t had the time to document, investigate, or look at with “new eyes.”

You will receive a document that outlines all the information about your security risks, server and desktop issues, along with an array of other things that are making the business work, or in some cases, not work. Once you receive the Network Discovery report, there are suggestions that will make life easier. You can call on Iris Professional Services to perform the Network Discovery and also make the necessary changes that fit in your budget and your timeline.

Having been an IT Manager in the past, and I have used options 1, 2 and 3 on many occasions. I can tell you from experience that the first three options do not make life happy. The fourth option is the best in my opinion (of course you’d think me biased, but it’s true).

Now, isn’t it time you took time on your weekends to spend it relaxing with family and friends, getting your batteries recharged? Hitting the pavement running first thing Monday morning is a nice way to start out the week.