How to identify time-wasting habits
Life is short.
Don’t we all wish we can maximise the effectiveness of every minute we spend? In order to do that, it’s critically important to identify the time wasting habits in our lives, the little seemingly harmless activities that are actually sucking time from us without our knowledge. These are the activities that cause you to wonder at the end of the day, where has all my time gone?
The first step to correcting your time wasting habits, like all bad habits, is to identify where you have gone wrong. To that end, I urge you to try out this little experiment for a day. Leave a pen and a piece of paper tonight, to put by your bedside. When you wake up in the morning, the experiment starts, and at the end of every hour or at intervals that better fit your schedule, note down what you have done for the past hour. Make this time log as detailed as possible, indicating exactly how many minutes you spend on each activity in the day. Make every minute accountable.
At the end of the day, before you go to bed, evaluate that piece of paper, and you will be amazed at how little time you actually spent on work or activities you have intended to carry out! What happened? Look closer, and you will realize how much time you have actually spent in checking your emails, daydreaming, walking to and from your workspace, fetching drinks, replying unnecessary phone calls, surfing Facebook, daydreaming, deciding what to eat for lunch, and a whole bunch of other non-work related activities.
Keep tracking daily and at the end of a week you should have a firm grasp of how to identify your time wasting habits. Then and only then, would you be able to change your habits and watch them slowly disappear from your time logs, and finally start having more fruitful and effective days!
So you have identified all the tasks that take your time during the course of a week and you know where you are probably spending too much or too little time overall. You can use the download provided, or make your own, to assess each item and see which category it falls into. ‘Keep it the same’, ‘Systematise’ or ‘Outsource’. Write all the tasks (however small they seem) in one of these columns.
This will give you a very clear picture of what you personally need to focus on, what tasks you need to streamline and systemise so they become less cumbersome or time-consuming and which tasks that you should outsource. Tasks that take a lot of time and that you dislike are prime candidates for outsourcing or at least systemising. If you love it and it doesn’t take much time to complete it’s a great candidate to fall into the ‘keep the same’ category.
When you’re thinking about outsourcing you could potentially hire people on an ad-hoc basis from somewhere like fiverr or Upwork. Alternatively you can find very reasonable Virtual Assistants whose hourly rate is often around $3, so ideal for those tasks which suck you time and that you would rather not do.
If you want to join my mailing list and get access to my epic Blogger’s Resource vault of cheatsheets and downloads (INCLUDING THE TASK ALLOCATION MATRIX) as a welcome gift, you can do that here.
So start today, start now, identify your time wasting habits and begin your journey towards more productivity!
Comments 16
A really insightful post – I feel like I really needed this at the moment. Thank you! #TheListLinky
Author
I’m glad it helped x
I know if I analysed my own habits I would waste a great deal of time idly surfing online. I often start researching something useful but go off on a totally unrelated tangent and before I know it I’m watching youtube videos of cats. I really need to make myself accountable for my own time wasting habits.
I don’t think I’ve ever sat down to write and not been distracted by Instagram or Facebook! I find setting myself an alarm on my phone for say and hour or however long I have spare to write keeps me focused and more determined to achieve my goal. #The List
Oh, I know I waste so much time already, 🙂 It’s the motivation to cut those out is the hard bit… haha #TheListLinky
Great advice as always, Aby! I’m such a time waster. ESPECIALLY with twitter and Facebook. I’m going to try some of your tips! #thelistlinky
Incidentally, I’m supposed to be writing Monday’s post right now. LOL!
My problem is forgetfulness and distraction: I log on to the computer to do some work, then think I’ll just check Facebook, then Zach does something requiring immediate attention so I forget what I was supposed to be doing 🙁 today I have made a concerted effort to restrict my screen time and save it for the evening after the kids are i bed #thelistlinky
I’ve tried doing this in the past and always get distracted at some point and forget to write things down for a few hours, then spend half an hour trying to remember what I actually did. Distraction is definitely my biggest problem, I always start something then get called away to do something and then forget I was in the middle of something and start something else (far too many somethings in one sentence ). I really need to give this another go though, I like the idea of working out what it equates to over the course of a year, that could be the kick up the butt I need x
#TheListLinky
I don’t have private social medias, only for blogging/business, as these seem to be the biggest time wasters and I get sucked into wasting hours on them if I do have personal ones! #thelistlinky
This is really handy to think about – I’m sure I waste so much time doing absolutely nothing! #thelistlinky
This is so much to think about. It is so hard not to sucked into it, isn’t it x
I like your tip of thinking how much time you spend on different things as a percentage. I don’t think I’ve thought of it before, but I’m sure there is a larger percentage of social media than I’d like to admit. I’ll be thinking of that as I go about the day and try to put it into numbers.
Great advice! I’m going to try this. I’m probably not going to like the results- I’m the queen of procrastination but that’s the challenge! X
I set myself mini deadlines throughout the day – it’s the only way to get things done! #thelistlinky
I’ve been noticing lately that I’ve been wasting a lot of time on Youtube! YT is like a black hole for me, I can waste so much time just going from one video to the next.
Julia // The Sunday Mode