Creative living is in its most fundamental essence a matter of creating order out of chaos, of moving from vagueness to definiteness. Those who develop this skill excel in the world of men, while those who do not must languish in the confines of their limitations.
To manifest order out of chaos you might consider following this simple rule: make clear agreements with those around you and update them if they cannot be upheld. If there is no agreement, there is nothing to uphold. If agreements are broken without being updated, you will move in fits and starts, rather than in a steady progression.
It is always better to warn of an impending missed deadline, to seek help when your resources are insufficient to meet the need or to ask for directions when you are lost than it is to let chaos creep back in where ground has been taken. If in doubt: clarify, clarify, clarify!
Gregory Hake 
It can be so easy to rationalize breaking an agreement, especially if you don’t believe it will hurt anyone or if there has been some time between the agreement and the break. Really though, in all instances, this is unacceptable. If an agreement needs to be revisited, revisit it. I think that this is a cause of many, many problems. If you can have the integrity an self discipline to make sure that this is unacceptable to you before the pressure comes on a situation, it makes it much more likely that the right decision will be made.
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Love this. We can destroy many wonderful opportunities with assumptions and misunderstandings.
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This is one of the hallmarks of a great co-worker. I heard it said in a management seminar that we should first be the co-worker, employee or employer we’d wish to have! This is a always a good place to start. Sometimes others have had a ready solution to something I felt stymied by. No one expects that one person has all the answers.
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Excellent point!
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Great advice!
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