A great part of success is to be able to manage our time: you discover this big truth bit by bit, especially when you are independent and you have to work on many different projects at the same time. Time loss makes us more tired, discouraged, less productive and it’s one of our worst enemies.
As CAVE Social says in the newsletter they sent me some time ago, everyone has a different answer to the question “How do you waste most of your hours?”, but surely there are some general good practices that are the least common denominator to waste less time during work days.
The infographic below, created by N2Growth, lists 15 ways to waste time that successful people avoid:
They are:
- Not listening (especially different opinions)
- Not finishing: success derives also from what you are able to finish
- Working late: contrariwise of what most people think, this doesn’t mean more diligence, but bad time and tasks management
- Lack of focus: focusing on priorities is a step to success
- Bad planning
- Technology interruptions
- Initiative overload: another key to waste less time is to know how much work you can do and to avoid useless and tiring overloadings
- Drop-in-visits: one of the reasons I don’t like to work in offices, where other people entering the room while you are working is the standard
- Bad delegation
- Poor organization
- Procrastination: no, you can’t postpone it, even if it’s a boring task
- Improper use of “yes” and “no”
- Unproductive meetings: often you get involved in the middle of them because of politeness, but you would have to avoid them by any means
- Not learning
- Not engaging
I’m surely guilty of some of these bad practices; in particular I find it difficult to manage technology interruptions and to not work late (I think it’s all part of a circle), but I’m trying to improve on these using The Pomodoro Technique and the Android apps for it together with my adored, unavoidable Todoist.
And you? Which one of these time wasters are your weaknesses?
