How many of these time wasters consume your day?

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Executive coach Mary Kelly says successful people get ahead because they waste less time than others.

“Most people don’t waste an entire afternoon. Instead, they lose five minutes here, 10 minutes there, another 15 somewhere else, until they have unknowingly surrendered two or three productive hours. Those lost hours become lost days. Those lost days become lost years,” she writes on her blog.

She has identified 25 time wasters that quietly steal your day. But before addressing those, let’s go back to a similar list written in 1990 by productivity consultant Alec Mackenzie in his classic book The Time Trap. That was before the internet became popularized and the smartphone was in everyone’s hand. Yet the time wasters still resonate.

• Management by crisis
• Telephone interruptions
• Inadequate planning
• Attempting too much
• Drop-in visitors
• Ineffective delegation
• Personal disorganization
• Lack of self-discipline
• Inability to say no
• Procrastination
• Meetings
• Paperwork
• Leaving tasks unfinished
• Inadequate staff
• Socializing
• Confused responsibility or authority
• Poor communications
• Inadequate control and progress reports
• Incomplete information
• Travel

Any of those hit home as aspects of your own work life that should be addressed? I was bemused by drop-in visitors and telephone interruptions, given today’s moaning about email and text messaging. Connection and communication – whatever its form – has its cost.

Let’s return to Ms. Kelly’s list:

• Starting the day without a plan: “If you don’t decide what matters first, someone else will. Email, text messages and other people’s emergencies quickly become your priorities,” she says. So begin every day knowing your top three objectives.
• Checking email constantly: Your inbox is someone else’s to-do list and every time you stop to check their needs you interrupt your own momentum.
• Keeping notifications on: Each one steals your attention. Keep in mind notifications are only conveniences, rarely emergencies.
• Multitasking: “Multitasking doesn’t save time; it simply creates more mistakes. Focus completely on one important task before beginning another,” she advises.
• Attending meetings without purpose: Ms. Kelly warns never to attend a meeting unless there is a clear objective and you genuinely need to be there. Ask before each one: “What decision are we making?”
• Holding meetings that last too long: She suggests a meeting scheduled for 60 minutes often could have been completed in 20.
• Looking for information: Develop simple organizational systems to avoid searching for documents, passwords, notes, receipts or files.
• Waiting until you’re motivated: “Motivation is unreliable. Discipline is dependable,” she says.
• Perfectionism: Often the final 5 per cent of improvement requires 50 per cent more effort.
• Procrastinating difficult conversations: Avoiding conflict, she warns, usually makes it bigger.
• Making the same decisions repeatedly: Create routines, use checklists and automate recurring tasks to avoid wasting time and energy on unnecessarily repetitive decisions.
• Doing work someone else should do: Learn to delegate rather than be a bottleneck.
• Saying yes too often: Each yes is a no to something else. Protect your calendar.
• Solving everyone else’s problems: When asked by people you supervise for an answer, develop their skills instead: “What do you recommend?”
• Switching between projects: Every transition requires your brain to reorient itself. When possible, group similar tasks together.
• Wasting wait time: Whether it’s a doctor’s office, airport or your child’s sport practice, use the time productively.
• Social media that you think is “just a minute”: Usually it isn’t.
• Clutter: “A cluttered desk often reflects a cluttered workflow,” she says.
• Not taking care of yourself: Fatigue, poor nutrition and lack of exercise and sleep can take a toll.
• Failing to prepare: Walking into meetings unprepared creates longer meetings and beginning projects without planning creates rework.
• Repeating mistakes: Every mistake should teach something.
• Avoiding technology that saves time: Learn the shortcuts technology can offer.
• Trying to do everything yourself: Delegation is an investment, she says, not a burden.
• Forgetting your long-term goals: Every week ask yourself: “Did I move closer to my most important goal?”
• Never stop to evaluate your time: This could be the biggest time waster of all. “You don’t need more time. You simply need to stop mindlessly giving it away,” she concludes.

Quick hits

• You can add to those time wasters, four more from executive coach Dan Rockwell: Replaying an irritating conversation all afternoon. Sending unnecessary emails because you need reassurance. Defending yourself when curiosity would serve you better. Worrying about things you can’t control.
• Author Mark Manson points out your procrastination just got smarter – thanks to artificial intelligence. Instead of writing a memo, you can now spend 45 minutes crafting the perfect prompt, tweaking it, regenerating it, tweaking it again and then, after the result comes, devote even more time to revising and editing that.
• Ottawa thought leader Shane Parrish observes it’s hard to see what you’re not looking for while it’s easy to see what you’re looking for.

Harvey Schachter is a Kingston-based writer specializing in management issues. He, along with Sheelagh Whittaker, former CEO of both EDS Canada and Cancom, are the authors of When Harvey Didn’t Meet Sheelagh: Emails on Leadership.