CHAPTER 4: AVOIDING TIMEWASTERS

There may be aspects of your daily life where you are wasting, not saving, time. In this chapter, we will look at how you can make use of your peak energy time, how to analyse where you are spending your time, how to identify timewasters and take action to overcome these.

Are you a morning or an evening person?

Before identifying what is wasting your time, it is useful to analyse when during the day you are at your best – when you have the most energy and, therefore, when you are likely to achieve more.

By answering the following questions, you can find out whether you are a morning or an evening type of person. This will help you plan your day, so that you undertake the most difficult, important or urgent work during this time. It will also help you identify when, in particular, you need uninterrupted time without distractions and timewasters.

Look at the questionnaire below and assume it is a normal working day. Answer the questions as honestly as possible.

1. At what time do you go to bed at night?

2. Do you have difficulty getting out of bed when you wake up in the mornings?

3. During the first hour after waking in the morning which would you prefer?

4. When you do have commitments early the next day, how early do you go to bed compared with a normal day?

5. Think back to times when you have had disagreements with your colleagues at work or felt ‘out of sorts’, even if you didn’t express it. Were these times:

6. Use the timer on your phone or look at your watch or a clock with a second hand, then look away and estimate the passage of one minute without any help. Then check your estimate. Was this:

Now total your scores.

The lower your score, the more of a morning type you are. So if you scored between 6 and 9 points, you are likely to work best in the mornings and, ideally, should use the time before lunch to do your ‘A’ tasks. If your score is higher (10 and above), you are more of an evening type, so use the afternoons onwards to carry out your critical tasks.

Energy flows

To verify your peak energy time, take a typical working day and plot the ebb and flow of your energy throughout the day. Mark on the chart when you eat and when you take a break, as these can have a direct effect on your energy.

Typically, when people have lots to do, they become glued to their desks. Yet, research shows that movement provides more oxygen to the brain. Our attention span also diminishes after 20 minutes of undertaking the same task. Make a point of taking breaks, getting a breath of fresh air and eating on a regular basis. Get up from your desk, even if it is just for a stretch every 20–30 minutes. There are many software programmes that remind you to do this, if this is a habit you think might be beneficial to you.

Identifying timewasters

Having analysed at what time of the day you work best and how to increase your energy levels, let’s look now at how you can save time by eliminating timewasters.

A proven way of doing this is to analyse how you spend your time in a typical working week. You can use an online calendar to record what you do every half-hour. Look back over the week, and then list timewasters and their probable causes.

Next, identify strategies that will help you avoid, or minimise, the things that waste your time. Set yourself an objective to eliminate the inconsequential things that steal most of your time.

Identify your own timewasters

Assess which activities waste your time by answering the following questions.

Score a ‘Yes’ if you generally do the following and a ‘No’ if you generally do not.

If you have answered ‘Yes’ for questions 1 to 5, you could well be wasting your time. Refer to tips 1 to 5 in the ‘Strategies to overcome timewasters’ section below.

If you have answered ‘Yes’ to questions 6 to 8, you potentially are wasting other people’s time as well as your own! Consider how your actions may be impacting others. For example, it is good to chat, but for how long do you do this? Can you wait to speak to other people at a set time, rather than interrupting them on a frequent basis? Can you improve your meeting management skills?

Strategies to overcome timewasters

Here is a list of potential timewasters, linked to the questionnaire you have just completed. Pay particular attention to the ones that apply to you, and select actions you can take to overcome these.

1. Too many meetings

• Ask yourself:
  • Do you have to go to them all?
  • Do you have to be present for the entire meeting or could you attend or dial in for just part of it?
  • Could someone else go in your place?
  • Do the meetings need to be held on such a regular basis?
  • Can you make the meeting shorter? (If you set aside an hour for a meeting, invariably it will last an hour. Table the meeting for 40 minutes and see what happens!)
• Put up a clock where everyone can see it.
• Have an agenda with time slots allocated to all the items.

2. Time wasted shifting from one task to another

• Work on one item at a time.
• Keep your in-tray away from your desk – you won’t be tempted to shuffle its contents.
• Have a tidy desk.
• Organise your e-mails (see the next chapter) and only look at and reply to them at one scheduled time during the day.
• Handle each piece of paper only once.
• Set yourself a target time to complete a task. When you have accomplished it, give yourself a break or a ‘reward’.

3. Taking on too much work

• Delegate/share the workload.
• Say ‘No’ to jobs that aren’t yours.

4. Interruptions

• Put your phone on voicemail, or ask a colleague to answer it for you so you have uninterrupted time to plan and to carry out important and urgent tasks.
• Find a meeting room, or a quiet space, to complete important tasks without interruption.
• Be assertive – ask the person who interrupts you to come back later.
• Stand up or perch on the edge of the desk when someone comes to see you. This signals to them that you do not have much time.
• Ask the person to prepare a list of points to raise with you and look at them together in one go. This should avoid them needing to interrupt you constantly.
• Spend five minutes in the morning planning the day with your team.
• If you are interrupted, write down where you have got to with the task in hand. It makes it easier to come back to it.

5. Surfing the Net

• Logging on to the Internet or Facebook may be tempting, but invariably one always spends longer than anticipated surfing the Net.
• Ask yourself whether this is an essential part of your work? Can you undertake this activity elsewhere? Can you set yourself a time limit for how long you will devote to this activity? Is it really a priority?