Why do we live in a world with a multitude of time-saving devices and software and yet still find ourselves always short on time? Let’s take a look at a few of the biggest drainers of our precious time and see how to foil them.
E-mails
How did you know this would top the list? Some people consider a multitude of e-mails to indicate conscientiousness and care. You can’t get into the realm of being negligent, but you can control the damage that unnecessary e-mails do to your business.
One of the biggest problems with e-mail is that they cut the flow of work. It seems innocent enough to quickly dash off a quick response, but if you multiply that by four or five over the course of a few hours and you’ve interrupted and cut down on work a lot. Push the e-mails to one side, and you’ll fare a lot better.
Videos and Other Web Goodies
The problem with surfing around the web for a minute as a little break is that it turns into more than just a surf. You end up crashing and staying under the surface for a while. When you dip into social media or visit some of your favorite web sites, you end up viewing videos or texting with friends. As much as possible, stay clear of sites that offer these time thieves or batch them until a time for a legit break.
Disorganization
Use Evernote or a similar tool to organize information and to shoot yourself reminders. Every other weekend or so, invest in some cleanup of computer files to more quickly find info you need. Searching can be a big time waster.
Bad Technology
If you’re fighting with Excel or Word or PowerPoint, fiddling, re-setting preferences, etc., invest some time in getting these set up in the most efficient way possible. The time it takes to do this will save you time in the long run.