These days, it seems that everyone is trying to fit a week’s worth of work into a day. While it may look like the epitome of efficiency efficiency, are you really making progress of just deceiving yourself?
Here are five time wasting activities you probably don’t even realise that you’re doing and how to avoid them.
Focusing on how busy you are
Yes – you are busy but if you spend your time telling yourself (and everyone else) how busy you are and do nothing else besides this then you aren’t going to get much done either.
Solution: The best thing to do is to start prioritising your workload. Do the important things first and mix it in with quick and easy jobs that you can get off your to-do list so that you make faster progress.
Hopping from one thing to the next
A real sign of being stressed and disorganised is when you can never fully finish one piece of work before you start doing something else. You can call it multitasking if you want to deceive yourself, but if you keep going around in circles lime a dog that’s chasing it’s tail then that’s a sure sign that it’s not working.
Solution: be strict on yourself – even if it looks like you can juggle multiple tasks try to stay focused and only have one or two things you are working on simultaneously.
Stop being pedantic
Call it being a perfectionist if you want, but if you spend more time umming and aahing about the details and don’t ever seem to get things to your exacting standards then it’s time to change.
Solution: Loosen up a bit and don’t be such a stickler for details. It’s great to have high standards but you need to have a set deadline and a limit to how far you’ll go before you move onto the next task or you’ll never get there.
Get your facts right at the very beginning
If you always jump straight into a project without doing your research first then you’ll likely get stuck along the way or find that your project wasn’t feasible. This is poor use of time and won’t do much for your motivation.
Solution: Do your research first – start everything you do with all the key information you need so that you can hit the ground running. You’re much more likely to make your project a success when you in on what your up against.
Learning everything as you go
This is often the case when people start a new business. You’re the service provider, the bookkeeper, the marketing guru, the IT guy. With all these jobs to juggle it can be quite overwhelming. It can also take a long while to learn computer programmes and get yourself around the jargon for each area of work – all time you could have spent doing the actual work for your business.
Solution: Get help! When you start your business, factor in some time and money to get an expert to teach you the basics or to do it for you. You can recoup the money by using your time to bring in more business that will cover any costs you pay.
