time wasters

Common Time Wasters

In order for you to improve on your time management it is essential that you establish what areas of your personal time management you are having problems with.

Listed below are frequent reasons why you become less effective in the workplace:

Interruptions

In the workplace people are always distracted from their work by interruptions, whether it be by telephone or by personal visitors.

You can receive so many phone calls in a day that sometimes that is the only thing you actually do in a day!

Likewise people always drop by your office to speak to you not only about work related issues but also just for general chit chat! It is vital that you develop a skill that can help you to avoid interruptions.

Meetings

Researchers have found that managers alone spend 17 hours a week in meetings.

This may not seem that bad but it has also been found that around a third of the time in meetings are wasted due to lack of planning, therefore, managers are taking time out from their own work to go to meetings and their time ends up been wasted.

Dealing with team members

As well as dealing with your own work you also end up dealing with other members in your team as well.

This may involve just talking about personal issues or helping them understand some aspects of work more clearer.

Tasks you should have delegated

Many people do not have the ability to delegate work and make sure it is done correctly.

Some people believe in doing all their work themselves when instead they could delegate out the work and give the work to one of their colleagues because they can do the job just as well.

Procrastination and indecisiveness

Many people have the problem that instead of making decision they avoid them altogether.

This wastes a great amount of time and if you just made decisions more quickly then it would free up some valuable time.

Crisis management

This is when major crisis occur and managers end up trying to put out the fire.

Ironically studies have shown that actions taken before the crisis would actually have prevented the fire in the first place.

Poor communication

This is a major time waster because if messages or information are not passed on correctly then it takes time to correct and communicate the correct information again.

Unclear objective and priorities

This probably the most biggest time waster because many people do not think that objectives and priorities should be set on a day to day basis.

By not doing this people spend too much time on minor things and not enough time on the more important things.

The inability to say No!

Many people within the work place will attempt to dump their work load or problems onto you this means that you become more stressed than ever because you too scared to say no to people.

Desk management and personal disorganization

If you find that you can only see less than 80% of your desk then you are suffering from desk stress.

This is a time waster because you can never find what you are looking for quickly because your desk is so disorganized. You must tidy it up in order to work more effectively.

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