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Saving Time: Things That Rob Your Time

If we learn to save time then we do more and saving time is the name of the game. While you're thinking of saving time, time robbers are everywhere. If we aren't careful the day is over before we know it's begun.

Whatever your circumstances there are things in your life and your daily activities that will rob you of the precious minutes we have to spend each day. We are all faced with the same challenges at work, at home and in our relationships that seemed to drive us crazy and keep us from completing the tasks we want to do.

Saving time isn't easy when one of the biggest time robbers is a lack of organizational structure and time management. In other words, we started out at the beginning of the day with a laundry list of things to complete and by the time we get to the end of the day we realize we've checked off only one, and maybe two items.

If you're a housewife, does this sound familiar? Fix the bed, get dressed and have breakfast. Start the breakfast dishes and get them loaded into the dishwasher when you realize that you are out of dishwashing detergent. Run to the computer to put that on your list for grocery shopping that week when you find out that your computer's been hit by a virus. Spend an hour and a half cleaning up the computer of the virus so that you can open up a word processing program.

While the word processing program is opening you get up to get a glass of water and realize that the kids left their dirty laundry on the floor in the family room. You pick up the clothes and head into the laundry room where you start a load of laundry, grab a light bulb and run out to the front porch to change the light that had burned out the night before.

By the end of the day you've changed a light bulb and cleaned the virus off your computer, the laundry is still in the washing machine and the dishes never got finished.

While this is a rather simplistic view of what can happen over the course of the morning it is, nonetheless, very real. Whether you're working in an office setting and attending to 20 different tasks at once or you're working at home the issues are the same. It's time to take control of your time and managers schedule to increase your productivity and improve the way you feel at the end of the day.

To Save Time Means We Do More

That's right. How much you get done during the day says a lot about how you feel at the end of the day. Many people will also equally the amount of work they achieve with the degree of stress may perceive at day's end. So let's figure out how to improve the amount of work you can get done while not burning out with stress and feelings of being overwhelmed.

One techniques for stopping time robbers is to use time management strategies that will improve your productivity and decrease the amount of time you spend on tasks that produce nothing in the end. Time management strategies are an important technique used by managers, entrepreneurs and independent consultants around the world.

One of the hardest things to accomplish is a task list that is not structured by another individual, such as a boss or manager. People who work from home or work for themselves must be more highly organized on a general basis because they set their own goals, their own future and their own pay scale based on the amount of work they can complete in a given time.

Another time robber which is common to all of us today is e-mail. It is highly unproductive to consistently sit in front of the computer screen and watch for e-mail that arrived in your inbox every 10 minutes. Shut off that auditory reminder that in e-mail has arrived so you aren't tempted to click over and 'just check'.

Instead set up two times during the day, such as morning and evening, when you go through your e-mail in the course of 15 minutes. Answer those which need answering and delete those which don't need to be addressed.

Stay away from all Internet and computer related time wasters such as online games, social networking and surfing until you've completed your tasks and you've been as productive as you want to be for the day. Social networking and surfing should be left for evening hours when your brain is not as creative and you are not as able to focus on work related activities.

Time robbers may be all around us but it is our responsibility and within our ability to eliminate them from our daily activities and ensure that we produce enough time to spend with our families, friends and work activities.

The previous article is on Delegating Effectively.

Other wiki resources: set goals; delegating authority; things that rob your time; procrastination; anger control