Zapping Time Wasters
Author: Gladwyn Dunne
May 2007
Features
Just swat those blankety-blank things. Here are 15 ways to put more time back into your life.
As it happens, I’m mad; I’m good and mad. What I want to know is, where is that four-day work week that we were supposed to get with the coming of the personal computer? Remember those eggheads who said we’d get our jobs done so much faster, and what were we going to do with all our extra time besides go to Las Vegas and gamble away our life savings? Well, folks, here’s the newsflash: our greater productivity simply allowed our jobs—not our leisure—to expand and that, incidentally, has fueled one of the greatest economic growth periods in world history. I hope you’re holding Blue Chip stocks.OK, now that we’ve got that out on the table, let’s take a deep breath and look at this time-thing calmly. We’ve all got to be brilliant with less, so let’s hold hands and walk through this together.
Start with four that are easy to zap:
BROWSING THE INTERNET
Stop it. Right now. You go on Google for a perfectly respectable search and then one thing leads to another and on to another and so on. Let’s just call it by its right name, cyber-adultery, cause you’re cheatin’ on your job.
ANSWERING MOST E-MAILS
First: get that spam-blocker gizmo going. Second: close the e-mail window, except for X-number of times a day. (You decide how often, unless you’re in a client-contact role.) When you open the window, put yourself on a time budget, say 15 minutes, which will get you scanning those sender and topic bars with laser (not Lasik) vision. Third: catch up with the others on Friday afternoon. Say you were out of town or something.
ANSWERING SOME PHONE CALLS
Make your outgoing calls very first thing in the morning and be available for any return calls until maybe 10:30 a.m. Incidentally, this is a good time to answer e-mails and other low-brainpower jobs. Then, in a perfect world, at certain times of the day when you have thinking, planning and writing to do, all calls go into voicemail period-end-of-story. Check it when you come up for air every 55 minutes or so. Oh, and don’t even start me on the Chatty Cathys out there.
LOOKING FOR STUFF
Move. Well, it was just an idea. There’s nothing like a move to make you face your clutter AND GET RID OF IT. Truly the thing that makes us hang onto the clutter is fear of loss (or laziness). Override both now.
First pick the five things you’d grab if the office were on fire (besides the naughty-but-nice notes from that guy in procurement). Those you’ll want close at hand because they’re probably what you use in your work every day. File them in your desk file drawer. Make a second stack of those things that, to put it delicately, CYA…you just want to have those memos, receipts and indiscreet photos of your boss, etc., right at hand for when the flame throwers get aimed your way. The third pile is where you put the fresh—emphasis on fresh—info or great ideas that will help you do your job better; they go into your file drawer, too. The rest, and I mean THE REST, either goes into a file that you have to walk across the room to access (you need the exercise) or into the round file. When you’re done, your desk should look like you could perform surgery on it.
FORGETTING STUFF
Why? Because you have to scramble (and do more work) to make it up, either at the last minute, or really make it up because damage was done. So learn to use Outlook’s calendar feature, or some-such system with a better memory than yours, to program in the repeat reminders, such as the reminder to put in for your travel expenses every month.
Doesn’t that feel good? Now you’re ready for the intermediate slalom; here are five more external things you can fix. However, these are a little more complicated to zip around:
DROP-IN VISITORS
If you were in retail, it would be wonderful. If you were in bio-medical research, not so wonderful (unless it’s, say, 2006’s Nobel Prize-winner in chemistry). In other words, this one’s a time-waster for you, depending on what opportunities the typical drop-in brings. If the arrival is an unhappy surprise, well, you’re just leaving for further testing at the local Office of Infectious Diseases.
And why aren’t you? Because you think the person hasn’t been born who can do it as well as you do. Or, it takes less time to just do it yourself in the first place. Uh, no. As Philip Richardson, of Current Affairs in Honolulu, said in our April “Wow Factor” story, “If there are menial things to do, pass it on so you can focus on what you need for excellence.” Amen, Brother. Task-triage works here: items that aren’t worth doing by anybody, dump; things that you really, really can delegate (and your helper will grow in the process), do; and finally, the wonderful things that only you can do, embrace.
NOT SAYING "NO"
This is where a quick review of Stephen R. Covey’s system in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People really shines, because you gotta know your personal MIS (most important stuff). It’s your basic values and goals and it works like a blood-pressure test. You run it by your inner self when a request comes up, and get a read-out against your MIS. You’d be amazed at how much you’re doing right now that doesn’t possess one scintilla of meaning to your core value system and is, therefore, a most serious waste of time.
NOT MAKING A DAILY LIST
So basic, I almost didn’t include it. But if you’re one of those optimists who writes every reminder, every phone message and every contact name on separate little scribbled papers, then just this one item will save you HUGE amounts of time. Just get out a lined pad and get started! You’re loooooong overdue. Here’s another thought: put the gotta-dos at the top. True mastery of this time-saver grows out of fixing the next item.
NOT PRIORITIZING
When the hive has dropped and it’s all flying around you like buzzing African bees, get it through your head that you can’t deal with all of them. To survive you’ve got to pick off the queen. That’s prioritizing. In your daily life, you’ll save time in the first place by prioritizing what’s got to be done no matter what, and then committing your time there.
At this point, you’re ready to try for the Black Belt of Time Management. Master these last five at a Zen Retreat, with a personal life coach or just out of dire need, but do it for your own good.
LACK OF GOALS
Some real soul-searching needs to get done. You have to know what makes you spring out of bed in the morning (besides the growing plague of bedbugs); most everything else is a waste of time. You have job goals—at least the ones in your job description, and, incidentally, that’s a great place to start because it’s a measuring stick that helps you prioritize. But once you get good at this, you’ll want goals for your lifetime (other than a weekend tucked away with George Clooney at his lakeside villa in Como).
THINKING THAT JUMPING IN AND JUST WORKING HARDER WILL CARRY THE DAY
No more, my friends. You have to sleep sometimes, and do laundry, pay bills, call your mother and form other meaningful human bonds. Repeat after me: I admit I am powerless over my inability to delegate, over my inability to focus on what’s most important, and, further, that it’s a total evil lie to myself and coworkers that I can catch up simply by putting out. You must determine to work S-m-a-r-t-e-r, instead. On your new daily list, you’ll be putting down not only the things that are on fire, but also some things that are out there a little bit on the horizon. That way you make sure to save time by thinking about them earlier, planning for them earlier, getting the resources you need earlier and, therefore, save yourself from last-minute foul-ups. What’s more time-wasting than those (except gossiping around the copier)?
LACK OF SELF-DISCIPLINE
I contend that messy lives—even mediocre ones—are the culmination of a million little bad decisions. We make hundreds of little decisions every day.The bad ones are like termites eating away at your possibilities. Off the decision-making table is, for example, “Should I brush my teeth when I wake up in the morning?” It’s on autopilot. Save time by shifting more of the good-for-you things into that mode. When you know— and own—your goals, half or more of the little angel-whispering-in-one-ear vs. that-little-devil-whispering-in-the-other scenarios go away—and that saves time. You commit to exercise; the devil doesn’t even get a hearing when it’s your time to work out. In no time, he’s off perched on some other couch potato’s shoulder.
NOT COPING WITH CHANGE
Every day, change is going on around you. Once you open your mind to the reality of continuous change, choose to do more than “cope.” It’s time to redirect that change by investing in you and your own empowerment. You’re smart enough to know the general direction of your job, your organization and your industry; start by directing your skill improvements there.
PROCRASTINATION
The best for last. It’s the one that’s nearest and dearest to my heart. It’s the plague of journalists—those people with curious minds—who’d rather keep on looking, interviewing and researching than actually give shape to a congealed mass that must be reorganized into a sharp, readable story. Nike’s campaign said it best: Just do it. More time is wasted anguishing about the looming task than “taking a bite out of the elephant,” until there’s nothing left but his little old tail.
