Twenty four hours a day minus the eight hours we sleep leaves
us with 16 productive hours to accomplish things that need to
be done at home and at work. Of these 16 hours, a lot of time
is wasted due to distractions, interruptions and
disorganization. We just don't manage our
time well.
THE TOP SIX TIME WASTERS
1. Television: We average four hours a day watching
television. If we live to be 72 it works out to 12 solid years
wasted watching TV. This doesn't include time spent on the
internet. SOLUTION? Go on frequent television fasts.
2. Emailing back and forth: Email becomes time consuming when
you consider how often we check it and how frequently we are
involved in sending back and forth messages. A survey was done
by the American Management Association with these results: Of
the 400 business managers polled.....35% use email to
communicate with clients...26% prefer the phone...15% would
rather have face to face meetings. Interesting results when
you consider the time email consumes.
3. Junk mail of the traditional kind. Too much time is wasted
opening and then trashing unwanted mail.
4. Drop in visits: When you are in your office with the door
open you are an open invitation to those with nothing better
to do to drop in for a chat. When they do, they eat up a lot
of your precious time. SOLUTION? Keep your door closed. If you
don't want to close your door arrange
your desk in such a way that people passing by can't see you
and drop in for a visit.
5. Reading every word of every document that crosses your
desk. We are living in the age of information and it seems
that much of it ends up on your desk each day demanding your
attention. If you don't learn how to scan it quickly and
either discard it or place it in your " for further
study" pile you will end up overwhelmed and stressed.
6. Phone calls that are too long and too frequent. Some people
just won't get off the phone and let you get back to work.
SOLUTION? Let people know that it is a bad time and then give
them a better time to call when you can spare a FEW minutes.
Before they call back get an egg timer and put it on your
desk. As soon as their call comes in get the egg timer going
and then see if you are able to bring the conversation to a
conclusion within the three minutes provided by the timer.
The message is clear....TAKE BACK YOUR TIME.
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