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Avoid These Time-Wasters!
We all try to manage our time effectively, but our efforts can be undermined by a number of common time-wasting errors. So, are you making these mistakes? And what can you do to avoid them?
We answer these questions in this week's Editors' Choice article, which looks at 10 Common Time Management Mistakes. You can also test your time management skills with our quiz, and learn how to use leverage to become exceptionally productive.
We also have the latest from our community, Career Excellence Club, where you can improve your problem solving, boost your effectiveness as a manager, and find out how to get a better deal for your team.
Enjoy the newsletter!
James Manktelow and Rachel Thompson
MindTools.com - Essential skills for an excellent career!
Featured Resources at Mind Tools
| | |  | Boost your productivity by avoiding these common mistakes.
All Readers' Skill-Builder | |  | | Use our interactive test to find out how you can improve your personal productivity. All Readers' Skill-Builder | | |  | Leverage
Achieving Much More with the Same Effort | All Readers | | Learn how to use time, knowledge and resource leverage to make the very most of the opportunities open to you. All Readers' Skill-Builder | | | | ... And from the Career Excellence Club
|  | | This model helps you break through blockages by looking at business situations from different leadership perspectives. All Members' Skill-Builder | |  | For your project to succeed, it's essential that you communicate with and "manage" project stakeholders effectively. Learn how to do this here.
All Members' Bite-Sized Training™ | |  | | This book teaches you how to improve your negotiation skills in everyday situations. Find out more about it here. Premium Members' Book Insight | | Editors' Choice Article
10 Common Time Management Mistakes
Avoiding Common Pitfalls
How well do you manage your time? If you're like many people, your answer may not be completely positive!
Perhaps you feel overloaded, and you often have to work late to hit your deadlines. Or maybe your days seem to go from one crisis to another, and this is stressful and demoralizing.
Many of us know that we could be managing our time more effectively; but it can be difficult to identify the mistakes that we're making, and to know how we could improve. | | 
Avoid these mistakes if you want to be highly-productive.
© iStockphoto/patrickomelette |
When we do manage our time well, however, we're exceptionally productive at work, and our stress levels drop. We can devote time to the interesting, high-reward projects that can make a real difference to a career. In short, we're happier!
In this article, we're looking at ten of the most common time management mistakes, as well as identifying strategies and tips that you can use to overcome them. These ten mistakes are:
Mistake #1. Failing to Keep a To-Do List
Do you ever have that nagging feeling that you've forgotten to do an important piece of work? If so, you probably don't use a To-Do List to keep on top of things. (Or, if you do, you might not be using it effectively!)
The trick with using To-Do Lists effectively lies in prioritizing the tasks on your list. Many people use an A - F coding system (A for high priority items, F for very low priorities). Alternatively, you can simplify this by using A through D, or by using numbers.
If you have large projects on your list, then, unless you're careful, the entries for these can be vague and ineffective. For instance, you may have written down "Start on budget proposal." But what does this entail? The lack of specifics here might cause you to procrastinate, or miss key steps. So make sure that you break large tasks or projects down into specific, actionable steps - then you won't overlook something important.
You can also use Action Programs (member-only article) to manage your work when you have many large projects to run simultaneously. (Action Programs are "industrial strength" versions of To-Do Lists.)
Mistake #2. Not Setting Personal Goals
Do you know where you'd like to be in six months? What about this time next year, or even 10 years from now? If not, it's time to set some personal goals!
Personal goal setting is essential to managing your time well, because goals give you a destination and vision to work toward. When you know where you want to go, you can manage your priorities, time, and resources to get there. Goals also help you decide what's worth spending your time on, and what's just a distraction.
To learn how to set SMART, effective goals, read up on Locke's Goal Setting Theory. Here, you'll learn how to set clearly defined goals that will keep you motivated.
You might also enjoy our Book Insight into "Long Fuse, Big Bang" by Eric Haseltine (for premium members). This book teaches you how to focus on your long-term goals without overlooking your short term priorities.
Mistake #3. Not Prioritizing
Your assistant has just walked in with a crisis that she needs you to deal with right now, but you're in the process of brainstorming ideas for a new client. You're sure that you've almost come up with a brilliant idea for their marketing campaign, but now you risk losing the thread of your thinking because of this "emergency."
Sometimes, it's hard to know how to prioritize, especially when you're facing a flood of seemingly-urgent tasks. However, it's essential to learn how to prioritize tasks effectively if you want to manage your time better.
One tool that will help you prioritize effectively is the Urgent/Important Matrix. This helps you understand the difference between urgent activities, and important activities. You'll also learn how to overcome the tendency to focus on the urgent.
The Action Priority Matrix (member-only article) is another useful tool, which will help you determine if a task is high-yield and high-priority, or low-value, "fill in" work. You'll manage your time much better during the day if you know the difference.
You might also want to go through our Bite-Sized Training class, How to Prioritize, to further enhance your skills. (This is available to all Career Excellence Club Members.)
Mistake #4. Failing to Manage Distractions
Do you know that some of us can lose as much as two hours a day to distractions? Think how much you could get done if you had that time back!
Whether they come from emails, IM chats, colleagues in a crisis, or phone calls from clients, distractions prevent us from achieving flow (member-only article), which is the satisfying and seemingly effortless work that we do when we're 100 percent engaged in a task.
If you want to gain control of your day and do your best work, it's vital to know how to minimize distractions and manage interruptions effectively. For instance, turn off your IM chat when you need to focus, and let people know if they're distracting you too often. You should also learn how to improve your concentration, even when you're faced with distractions.
Additionally, our article on managing email effectively teaches you how to gain control of your email, so that it doesn't eat up your entire day.
Mistake #5. Procrastination
Procrastination occurs when you put off tasks that you should be focusing on right now. When you procrastinate, you feel guilty that you haven't started key tasks; you come to dread doing them; and, eventually, everything catches up with you when you fail to complete them on time.
Start by taking our procrastination quiz to find out if procrastination is a problem in your life. If it is, then learn the strategies you need to beat procrastination.
For instance, one useful strategy is to tell yourself that you're only going to start on a project for ten minutes. Often, procrastinators feel that they have to complete a task from start to finish, and this high expectation makes them feel overwhelmed and anxious. Instead, focus on devoting a small amount of time to starting. That's all!
You might also find it helpful to use Action Plans. These help you break large projects down into manageable steps, so that it's easy to see everything that you need to get done, and so that you can complete small chunks at a time. Doing this can stop you from feeling overwhelmed at the start of a new project.
Tip:
Our Career Excellence Club Bite-Sized Training session on Overcoming Procrastination gives you in-depth strategies and tips for dealing with procrastination. |
Mistake #6. Taking on too Much
Are you a person who has a hard time saying "no" to people? If so, you probably have far too many projects and commitments on your plate. This can lead to poor performance, stress, and low morale.
Or, you might be a micromanager: someone who insists on controlling or doing all of the work themselves, because they can't trust anyone else to do it correctly. (This can be a problem for everyone - not just managers!)
Either way, taking on too much is a poor use of your time, and it can get you a reputation for producing rushed, sloppy work.
To stop this, learn the subtle art of saying "yes" to the person, but "no" to the task. This skill helps you assert yourself, while still maintaining good feelings within the group. If the other person starts leaning on you to say "yes" to their request, learn how to think on your feet, and stay cool under pressure.
Mistake #7. Thriving on "Busyness"
Some people get a rush from being busy. The narrowly-met deadlines, the endless emails, the piles of files needing attention on the desk, the frantic race to the meeting... What an adrenaline buzz!
The problem is that an "addiction to busyness" rarely means that you're effective, and it can lead to stress.
Instead, try to slow down, and learn to manage your time better.
Tip:
"Do More Great Work", by Michael Bungay Stanier, is full of ideas and tips to reduce the "busywork" that you're doing, so that you're more excited and engaged in the work that matters. Click here for our Book Insight on it. (Available to Career Excellence Club premium members.) |
Mistake #8. Multitasking
To get on top of her workload, Linda regularly writes emails while she chats on the phone to her clients. However, while Linda thinks that this is a good use of her time, the truth is that it can take 20-40 percent more time to finish a list of jobs when you multitask, compared with when you complete the same list of tasks in sequence. The result is also that she does both tasks poorly - her emails are full of errors, and her clients are frustrated by her lack of concentration.
So, the best thing is to forget about multitasking (member-only article), and, instead, focus on one task at a time. That way, you'll produce higher quality work.
Our Expert Interview with Dave Crenshaw, looking at The Myth of Multitasking (for Career Excellence Club premium members), will give you an enlightening look at multitasking, and will help you explore how you can manage simultaneous projects more effectively.
Mistake #9. Not Taking Breaks
It's nice to think that you can work for 8-10 hours straight, especially when you're working to a deadline. However, it's impossible for anyone to focus and produce really high-quality work without giving their brains some time to rest and recharge.
So, don't dismiss breaks as "wasting time." They provide valuable down-time, which will enable you to think creatively and work effectively.
If it's hard for you to stop working, then schedule breaks for yourself, or set an alarm as a reminder. Go for a quick walk, grab a cup of coffee, or just sit and meditate (member-only article) at your desk. Try to take a five minute break every hour or two. And make sure that you give yourself ample time for lunch - you won't produce top quality work if you're hungry!
Mistake #10. Ineffectively Scheduling Tasks
Are you a morning person? Or do you find your energy picking up late in the afternoon? All of us have different rhythms, that is, different times of day when we feel most productive and energetic.
You can make best use of your time by scheduling high-value work during your peak time, and low-energy work (like returning phone calls and checking email), during your "down" time. Our article, Is This a Morning Task? (member-only article) will teach you how to do this.
Key Points
One of the most effective ways of improving your productivity is to recognize and rectify time management mistakes.
When you take the time to overcome these mistakes, it will make a huge difference in your productivity - and you'll also be happier, and experience less stress!
Tip:
To continue improving your time management skills, take our Time Management Quiz, which will help you identify where your strengths and weaknesses lie. You can also take our Bite-Sized Training class, the Time Management Audit (for Career Excellence Club members), to hone your skills to the next level. |
| Share this article: |  |  | | A Final Note from James
Even if you don't make these time management mistakes, remember that there's always room to improve your productivity and effectiveness. And do take out time management quiz - you're almost certain to pick up useful tools and techniques from it!
In our next newsletter, we're focusing on gaining the background knowledge you need to be successful, and respected, in your career.
Until then, best wishes!
 | James Manktelow
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Essential Skills for an Excellent Career! |
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