You can be a brilliant and creative person, but if you do not manage your time effectively, you will not be successful.
“Everything you want to do at work takes time,” writes Brian Tracy in his book Master Your Time, Master Your Life. "The only way you can get enough time to do something that can really change your work is to save the time you usually spend on something else."
Start by looking at the seven factors that are wasting your time.
1. Email, phone and messages
“When the phone rings and e-mail arrives, your train of thought is disturbed and you get distracted,” Tracy writes.
What to do: highlight the periods of the day when you do not allow breaks.
2. Unexpected guest
When someone unexpectedly appears in your office or workplace, that person disrupts your work and reduces your effectiveness.
What to do: “Stand up quickly when intruders come to your workplace and pretend you just arrived,” Tracy writes. Tell the time waster that you are really overwhelmed with work today, and you have a lot to do. Then take the visitor away from your workplace and return to your task.
3. Meetings
You already know this: many meetings are a waste of time.
What to do?
- Plan meetings only for the time that you really need. There is no reason to postpone meetings for an hour. Ask yourself: what can I do in 10 minutes?
- The goal. What does success look like? Only by formulating the desired final state can you build the elements of success. In fact, every decision you make - where to hold a meeting, whom to invite, how to facilitate mutual understanding - should be based on how you answer this question.
- Create an agenda. Once you have set goals, carefully consider the course of the meeting. The old-fashioned definition for this is the “agenda,” but you need to do more than create a bulleted list of content. You need to structure your meeting so that there is a stream that makes sense, creates opportunities for participants.
4. Plan contingencies.
You know this pattern: as soon as you start working on an important project, something completely unexpected happens that distracts you from the main task for several minutes or even hours.
What to do? Think before you act. Tracy advises you to take a deep breath, calm down and stay objective. Take the time to find out what happened. Have a clear understanding of the problem before proceeding.
5. Putting things off for later
Procrastination is not only a thief of time ... It is a thief of life. Your ability to stop putting things off and get started can change your life.
What to do? Sometimes the best way to complete a large project is to take a small piece and complete it. Or practice the technique, seeing your task as a piece of cheese: punch holes in it, select five minutes and do some of the work.
6. Communication
As much as 75% of the work is spent on interacting with other people. Unfortunately, at least half of this time is spent on communication.
What to do? Arrange a meeting with friends at work during coffee breaks, lunches and after work.
7. Indecision
Every time you put off a decision or spend too much time making a decision, you lose time - and put off taking action.
What to do? Decide whether you should do the work yourself (then you need to do it quickly) or whether you can delegate it. If someone else has to make a decision, ask for a quick response.
“Remember that you can only do one thing at a time,” Tracy writes. “This is the most important thing you can do at this moment.”
Productivity is what determines our productivity. What hinders productivity? How to achieve its increase? Please put the suggested tips into practice.
In order to work productively, it is necessary to identify and neutralize what prevents us. It turns out that the enemies of productivity are actions and phenomena that are familiar to all of us, which we are used to taking for granted. We do not even suspect that they can “eat” up to 80% of our working time.
Having recognized the enemy by sight, we will be able to fight him more effectively.