With time being very precious as an entrepreneur, time must be managed by you wisely. The time in your day should be used for important work and tasks to achieve your goal or main objective. Having time wasters can be a difficult challenge because time wasters may seem productive at the time but they actually take you away from what’s important.
Some time wasters will require more time than what is really needed to complete the task when other methods could have been used that would not waste so much valuable time. In addition to wasting time, another harmful effect of time wasters is they tend to block out good ideas or take your mind off of progress towards the accomplishment of your objectives. So how you can recognize time wasters? Here are a few ideas to help an entrepreneur avoid time wasters:
Time wasters can be recognized through patterns . That is to say, if you tend to do the same things repeatedly and either not finish or feel like it’s taking too much time, then that activity may be considered time wasting. The time involved could range from small increments (a few minutes) up to a few hours.
An example time waste of these patterns would be checking email every hour on your smartphone even though nothing important happens in those emails and they don’t require any action. Or another time wasting pattern would be getting easily distracted by anything other than what you’re doing at the moment for no apparent reason.
Another great time waster is time spent on social media . Social media time wasters can be huge time leeches if you let them. It’s easy to get caught up in the time crunching hours of time into your online accounts and forgetting that time is still moving forward for you while you’re wasting time and posting pictures or updating other people about events that really don’t need to be shared with others.
Making time for family or significant others is a great thing to do. However, it can be time consuming if done at the wrong time or when it interferes with “real” work. This could be especially bad if this person knows how to time manage themselves and they time you out of what time is left in your day to get important things done.
Realize the time waste potential of time wasters by understanding your own patterns and what activities they involve. This may take some time to understand but once you do, you’ll have a much higher chance of increasing productivity and finishing more work.
If time wasters are unavoidable then try alternative ways to use up this time in an efficient way that doesn’t impact the quality of your focus towards your final goal as an entrepreneur.
This time could be used for small intervals of time to do quick exercises like pushups or sit ups. It can also be used for time to learn something new, like a language or a skill that will help you grow as an entrepreneur.
The time wasters mentioned are only examples and there may be other time waster patterns that work better with the individual. So make sure to understand your own time wasting patterns and try to fix them before they become worse time leeches in your day.
You may want to ask a few friends or family members if they think certain habits are time wasting, just to make sure it’s not something you’re doing that needs correction. Remember: time wasters can create a whole slew of other problems so be mindful about where your time goes!
