One thing we know for sure, there’s 24 hours in a day. How you spend that time can make the difference between feeling overwhelmed and drained vs feeling accomplished and fulfilled. It’s all in how you organize and manage your time. The top 5 time suckers are:
Inefficiency
Organization is the key to maximal efficiency. It’s very important to have a system for everything. I have files for papers, for employees, for studies, for contracts, for… for pretty much everything. As soon as there’s a “thing”, I create a file. I do the same with emails. I use gmail and I create folders for office, for companies I work with, for To Do items.
Do this right away so it doesn’t pile up and become a time sucker to organize. The more you do the more efficient you become. For example. I do all my own social media posting. This may seem like a time sucker- but it’s actually very easy and takes me literally only minutes to do because I’ve become good at doing it from having done it for so long. When I had someone else doing it for me, I found myself re-writing everything they did and that was a bigger time sucker than doing it myself.
Procrastination
Putting things off rather than getting them done in the moment is lazy. It’s a very big time sucker to put things off until later and then feel overwhelmed that there’s too much to do. Tackle one thing at a time, organize and then before you know it you’ll have accomplished much more than you’ve realized, it’s a really great feeling.
I’m all for organized laziness, and I admit there are weekend days where I don’t leave the house, I loll about and read my book and wallow in delicious down time. But those are defined times I delegate to turn everything off and reset my energy.
Over-delegation
As I mentioned, I tried delegating my social media posting to a a few different “experts.” What I found was that it took more time for me to review and re-write rather than do it myself. The same is true for organizing my own calendar. I find that by using google calendar, I simply add the date and time and event and it’s done in less time than it would take for me to have someone else do it.
Under-delegation
There are things that you just don’t need to do and under-delegation is as big a time sucker as over-delegation. Know what these are for you and delegate!
Random acts of time sucking
Not getting enough sleep, not exercising, not having a healthy diet are all big time suckers because they drain your energy and don’t allow you to function at your best. It’s very important to take care of you first so you can take care of everything else on your list and put a stop to the time suckers in your life.
Did you enjoy this post? Find more on Navigating Your Career here.
