How we waste time and do nothing

Posted on February 3, 2009 by Tom

I hate time-management because it basically tells you how to cram a 12-hour work day into an 8-hour one.  I don’t want to cram 12 hours into 8, I want to cram 8 into 8!  Trying to do that will be challenging enough.

Time management seems to create the illusion that you can control (your)time, but time just keeps running.  And why do we feel like we have 12 hours of work?  Not because we have 12 hours of work, but because we waste a lot of it.  (like me typing in this post instead of working on my seminar-report for work)  How do we waste it?  Just took a look around the office.

Try to do things you’re not good at.  It’s an ego-thing.  Nobody wants to admit they’re not good at something.  But why would I waste 3 hours trying to lay-out something in InDesign, when someone else can do it in 2 hours?  Everybody has different talents.  Making the most out of it saves time.

Postpone and don’t reschedule.  Every time you postpone something, it takes times to pick it up again.  In time-management literature there’s something like the 2-minute rule:  if you could do something in 2 minutes, you should just do it and never postpone.  One of the few rules I like, but it works for everything.  Even the long and difficult tasks.  If you can’t make up your mind, decide on a timeframe where you can and stick to it!

Communicating.  How hard can it be to shake off a telemarketer, or a person who tries to get an unscheduled meeting by just showing up?  You don’t think he knows he comes unasked?  Trying to be friendly to everybody is a huge waste of time.

Useless meetings.  Most of the times I have the feeling meetings are there so some people can say ‘they did something important’.  There’s no clear agenda, no timelimit, you just go in and see what happens.  Result… you can’t plan in that part of your day because you don’t have all the information.

Distractions.  Anything that keeps you from doing your job.  Colleagues that keep barging in, phone calls,… if what you want to do is that important you should find the right place and state of mind to do it.

I believe that when you’re able to get into that state of flow what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is telling about, there’s no more 12-hour work a day.

You may want to read:

• Put in 10,000 hours and burn-out
• How to stay focussed and gain time
• How to get the most out of meetings