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Uncover Your Personal Time Wasters

We’ve talked about some of the most common ways to fritter away your precious minutes, such as by surfing around online, checking email, answering unnecessary phone calls, replying to unnecessary text messages and so on.

But you probably have a few time-wasters that are unique to you. It’s your job to uncover (and overcome) them.

One way to do this is to just keep a log of everything
you do every day for the next week or so.

To do this, stop every half hour and record EVERYTHING you did in the previous 30 minutes. You should also note when you don’t do anything at all.

You might uncover time wasters such as:

➢ Daydreaming. You might be reading something and a page or two later you realize you have NO idea what you just read. Or maybe you’re about to write something, but you end up staring at the blank screen, daydreaming.

➢ Getting distracted by something trivial and needing to “fix” it. For example, if your chair squeaks, you might find yourself running off to get oil to fix it.

➢ Getting visually distracted, such as when you look out the window and see cats fighting in your yard.

➢ Getting distracted by noise, such as when you find yourself sitting near an open window, trying to eavesdrop on the neighbors. ☺

➢ Feeling restless or uncomfortable. You might think your clothes are “scratchy” so you change clothes. Or maybe the room is too hot so you turn up the A/C.

➢ Remembering suddenly that you have something even more urgent to do, like pay the phone bill or set up an appointment. Instead of making a note of these things and doing them all at once, you waste time by breaking your focus to do them at the exact moment you think about it.

These are just a few examples.

Obviously, you’ll uncover your own time-wasters that aren’t on this list. If you have any troubles eliminating these distractions, see the section later in this report on moving past procrastination.

Tags: Time Management

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