Do Not Waste Any Time Anymore: Avoid The Time Robbers

Here are some questions to help guide you derive the answer.

Time robbers remain one of the biggest culprits in you wasting unnecessary time. Are you conscious of the time robbers in your office?

1. Distractions
What are the common distractions you have to deal with? Do you know what they are? Are they emails, web pages, links, sms, Facebook, Twitter, chats and messengers? Have you turned them off? Why have you not? Is the reason more of an excuse or a real reason? Try not having them for half a day and see how time you would have gained.

2. Set Routines
Do you set a routine for certain work so you can avoid giving yourself excuses not to do certain work? Rather than blaming it on not having the mood to do some projects, waiting for the right inspiration, etc. Many great artists and authors are known to have a set routine they adhere to in order to complete their work. What about you?

3. Focus On One Work At A Time
Have you ever thought multi-tasking is over rated? Focus. You can have multiple projects but when you start on each of them, focus on one at a time.

When doing project A, do just that. Do not work on project A but you are worrying on project B. Has it ever occurred to you that focusing makes you gain more time? Don’t waste any time, learn to focus one work at a time.

4. Use Blocks Of Time
Be aware of when you are good at doing certain work. Are you better at answering emails early in the morning when no one is in the office yet?

Or are you better at working on the proposal when it is all quiet and leave the emails till when it is all noisy in the office? Use blocks of time to your advantage and do not waste any time.

5. Keep A Schedule
How good is your discipline in keeping to a schedule? A lot of people have to-do lists, but these to-do lists are almost always moving targets, so they use it to cook up excuses why their assignments are not completed on time. Do you keep to your schedule so you do not waste any time? Is your to-do list accompanied by a "when you should complete the tasks"?

6. Action
Lights, Camera must be followed by Action. Otherwise, nothing is recorded. There must be a "to do" time. To do means to implement which means things must move on to the next course of action.

7. Business Not Busy-ness
If you confuse busy-ness for business then it’s almost for certain you have wasted precious time. You must know what actions will move things forward and what does not. Busy-ness are things that makes you look very busy but does not contribute to your work. Do not confuse the two.

Do not waste any time by recognizing the real time robbers in the modern workplace. Turn off the chats and messengers. Stop updating your Facebook. Start to see how much time you would have gained. I suspect you know some of these; it is the lack of discipline that is stopping you from gaining more hours of productive work time.

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