10 Time-Wasters You're Most Likely Guilty Of

You probably know by now that my jam is efficiency, productivity, and maximising every minute of my time.  And you may have also seen me talk about the uncomfortable truth about time: 

• You can't get it back once you've spent it 
• You can't buy more of it 
• You never know how much of it you have left 

So, rather than sharing more ideas and strategies with you about how to make the most of your time, I thought this week I would illuminate some of the common (and sometimes unexpected) ways that you're probably wasting time every day. Don't worry, at the end, I'll let you in on a secret on how NOT to get hooked in these time-wasting habits anymore!

So sit back and get ready because I'm going to show you 10 time-wasters you're most likely guilty of!

#10 - Multitasking 

In the pursuit of efficiency and productivity, we often multitask and try to do more than one thing at a time.  Sometimes this works - you can listen to a podcast while you're cooking dinner for example. But is it possible to give 100 in both things?

A study done by the University of London found that participants doing high-load multitasking showed a drop in their IQ. The results suggested that multitasking causes us to actually make more mistakes, retain less information, and change the way our brain works. Talk about how not to do effective time management!

You see it all comes down to the load on the pre-frontal cortex of the brain, and how hard it has to work to do the tasks at hand.  It can handle relatively automatic tasks - like walking and talking at the same time. But as soon as we try to split our focus on two high-load tasks, we become less efficient. 

In the end, allocating focus time to each of the tasks you're working on will be far more effective than trying to do it all at once. As English broadcaster Jeremy Clarkson humorously puts it, "Multitasking is the ability to screw everything up simultaneously."

#9 - Being reactive  

There is a lot we can't control in life, but also a lot that we can. To be reactive is to be controlled by external influences. To be proactive is to anticipate the future; to consider and decide how we respond to those external influences. 

In Stephen Covey's classic book 'The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People', habit number 1 is 'Be Proactive'.  Let that sink in for a second. Covey is saying that the most important habit you can develop is proactivity. 

Let's take the example of your customer service.   

A reactive approach is to go about your business, and respond to customer enquiries, questions and issues as they arise. This will cost time to resolve the issues, handle the customer dissatisfaction, impact the completion of other tasks and priorities, and impact your brand and customer loyalty. 

A proactive approach is to intentionally map out the customer journey, identifying points where there may be friction or challenges that arise in the process, and proactively addressing those issues by setting your customers expectations, preparing scripts or templates for your support team to handle enquiries, or even better improving the product or process so the issue doesn't arise in the first place. 

Taking the time to look ahead and anticipate the possible pathways so you can be prepared for them will save you not only time, but money, reputation and probably a few extra grey hairs along the way. Now that's smart business management.

#8 - Striving for perfection 

As a perfect follow up for #9, another way we waste time is in striving for perfection. Trying to tick every box, dot every i, and cross every t is an ineffective approach to life and business.  Sometimes, done is better than perfect. 

Now - I'll caveat this statement by acknowledging that for some industries, done is NOT better than perfect.  Financial services or legal matters for example, do require a high level of accuracy, compliance and rigour.  BUT - even within those industries, there are certain tasks that don't require perfection - marketing for example - so this still applies to you too, keep reading. 

Perfection is an illusion, and the only way we move closer to it is by doing things imperfectly but consistently. It's like learning how to walk. If we as babies waited until we were perfect before actually starting to walk, do you honestly think we would have ever learned to do it?

Now, this may be a silly question, but I am willing to bet that there is SOMETHING in your world that you are waiting to be perfect to act on. So stop sitting on your butt wasting time and waiting for perfection to smack you over the head - just take action. 

#7 - Rework  

Perhaps the best way for me to illustrate the time-wasting effects of rework is this - Hands up if you look through your email a few times a day, scanning the list to see what you should respond to next? 

Here's a hard truth for you: Every time you touch an email or review a to-do more than once, you are wasting precious time.  You might be thinking "Ok sure - but that takes like a couple of seconds - what impact will that really have?". 

Let's conservatively say that you have 20 'come back to this later' emails in your inbox. And that you check your emails once every two hours. Now for the simplicity of the example, we're going to assume that your 'come back to' emails stay at about the same - so every time you clear one off, another one arrives. 

We'll say it takes 10 seconds to scan each email and decide which one to do next. 

So that’s 10 seconds, over 20 emails, 4 times a day. 

That's 800 seconds a day. Which is 13(ish) minutes. Or a little over an hour a week. Which is actually 52 hours in a year. 

Now I'd consider these numbers VERY conservative - and would put money on the likelihood that many of you are checking your emails far more often than 4 times a day, and probably doing that 6 or 7 days a week, and your 'come back to' list is probably waaaaaaaay longer than 20. 

Go ahead, do the maths. I'll wait. 

The point here is my friends, that any time you touch an email or to-do item, and then touch it again, then a third, fourth, fifth and fiftieth time, you are leaking precious time and brain power that could be spent on better things. And when you have big dreams, every minute you spend moving towards your dream is priceless.  

Don't worry, I have the solution on how you can take back your time at the end of this article. So read on!

#6 - Lack of preparation 

You wouldn't get in the car and drive to the other side of the country without a bit of preparation, would you? So why would you set out in your business without preparing? 

I get it. It's hard to see the forest for the trees and take time to step out to prepare for the future when every second of every day you are pulled into the day to day demands of your team and your business.  Perhaps you feel as though you're just along for the ride instead of sitting in the drivers seat. I've been there too.

Yet preparing is the most important work you will do. How do you do this?

• Set the vision.
• Develop a plan to reach the vision.
• Prepare your team so they know which road to follow and turns to take.

Without this clarity, I guarantee you and your team are wasting time every day. Lots of it. It may seem impossible to take a day out to think, reflect and set a clear goal for the business and team. It may seem tedious to do aaaaalllllll the communicating that needs doing to inform and update them. It may seem nerve-wracking to decide on a big picture goal & challenge your inner imposter to think big and believe in what is possible. 

But let me tell you - you are wasting far more time pushing forward without a clear path than it would take you to step out of the day to day chaos and figure out what the path should be. 

#5 - Not Saying No 

As a leader, a business owner, a parent, a partner, a human - people will want things from you. And sometimes, you don't really have the option to say no (you know, like feeding your children when they are hungry). But sometimes, we react without thinking about it and keep taking on board people's requests and stacking them on top of our pile of stuff to do and worry about. 

Saying No is hard. Many of us will prioritise what other people ask of us before we prioritise ourselves (guilty!!). However, it doesn't have to take the form of "No. Go away. I'm not helping you". It can take the form of giving our team a framework with which to ask questions of us, which includes them coming up with one or more possible solutions to their problem. It can be helping someone identify the next step on their pathway to self-sufficiency.

What saying no will always do is stop you spending time on things that are not the most important things for you to be spending your time on.   

Still with me?

#4 - Procrastination 

Ahhhh, good old procrastination. We all do it.. sometimes. 

I find that procrastination occurs most frequently with the things I really don't want to do, or don't see massive value in. Those tasks that seem to carry over from one day, to the next, and the one after that - until 3 weeks later it's still sitting there and you're up till 3am finishing it off as the deadline looms.  

Willpower is a muscle. One that wears down over the course of the day. Ever been so resolute about a commitment you've made to yourself first thing in the morning (I will have NO sugar today!!!), but then as the day wears on your arm becomes bendier and bendier until BAM - you find yourself having a Tim Tam with your afternoon coffee to beat the 3pm slump.  Oh well - try again tomorrow! 

Two great tactics I use to prevent procrastination are 1) to plan my week ahead of time, so past me has already committed that Tuesday morning at 10am is when I will work on that thing I don't really want to do but must be done, and 2) to always plan the hard things at the start of the day. 

So - if you're procrastinating at something, book it in at the start of the day and give it just 15 minutes. Make a deal with yourself that after 15 minutes, if you're not feeling it you can put it down and come back to it later. Worst case you'll get partway done. Best case you'll fall into flow and realise that the thing you were resisting doing wasn't so bad after all.

Check out my article on how to beat procrastination with these 10 tips!

#3 - Making too many decisions  

Your brain - clever as it is - only has a certain amount of decision making power each day. Ever made it to the end of a particularly intense day, and someone asks you what you want for dinner and you just cannot for the life of you make a decision? Can't someone else just figure it out and bring you something delicious with a very large class of wine? 

Yet we spend all our wonderful, decision making juice on simple, relatively impactless things like which train to catch and what to wear today - decisions that could really be made in off-peak times, or as part of a focused decision making activity. 

Steve Jobs had a wardrobe full of blue jeans and black skivvy's, so he never had to decide 'what will I wear today?'. Now I'm not suggesting that you go to those extremes, but consider ways to pre-decide on those things that steal your decision making energy, and your time, so you can preserve your prime decision making capacity for the tasks that need it the most - making you more efficient, and ensuring you make better decisions in the process.  

#2 - Being sucked into the Social Media/Streaming vortex  

Every single one of us has at some point been sucked into the vortex where you just jumped on for a quick check of your feed or one episode of your show, and 3 hours later found yourself arising from the couch a little dazed and wondering where the time went. 

It's not just a common challenge, it's 100% by design. As highlighted in the 2020 documentary 'The Social Dilemma' (a must-watch if you haven't seen it), the makers of these services spend A LOT of time and money hacking your behaviour to figure out the secret sauce that will keep you hooked. By analysing your behaviour, they know exactly what will keep you scrolling for eternity. TV shows have always used the 'cliffhanger' strategy to keep you salivating for the next episode, but now you don't have to wait until next week - you can keep binging away until you're done!

It's incredibly clever of them, but disruptive to you if you don't have a clear strategy to manage it. So set some boundaries on your social media and TV time. If you want to chill out and watch or scroll for 30 minutes and then get back with life, set a timer. If you want to stop compulsively opening your social media apps every time you pick up your phone, delete them.  Give yourself defined boundaries and beat the master manipulators at their own game by taking decisive ownership of how you use your own time. 

#1 - Doing things manually 

Memory is great. It helps us in so many ways, and life would suck without it. But whether you believe you have a good memory or a bad memory, you should be selective in what you use it for. 

You see technology is also great, and it is far more reliable, predictable and has greater capacity to remember things than we do. We have calendars, reminders, notifications, automations and integrations to help us remember, organise and do the things that life and business demands of us.  

There are SO MANY ways that we throw our time away by not simply thinking to ourselves, how and when will I need this information, and what's the best way for me to keep track of it. There is very likely an app for that, so your ability to be more clever at how you keep track of things is limited only by your desire and your imagination. 

Time management and business management is not so much about working hard as it is about working smart. Where might you be falling into the habit of doing stuff manually that could be done smarter?

BONUS - Not Resting Enough 

I know I said this list was 10 things, but I'm on my soapbox now and I'm on a roll, so I'm throwing in a bonus item. Most business owners (myself included sometimes) do not get enough rest.  

Lack of rest only further exacerbates the cycle of inefficiency and wasted time. We burn ourselves out to the point that our minds and our bodies say ENOUGH, and force us to listen through illness or exhaustion.

But without proper rest, recovery and recharge time, we absolutely cannot be productive. We make ineffective decisions that require rework, we take longer to get things done, we procrastinate more, and we revert to energy saving mode.

Perhaps the most important domino in the whole box, making sure you take time to pause, to refill your cup, to nurture yourself is critical to making sure you use your time effectively. 

So how do waste less time?

If you found yourself getting 11/10 on this list, don't worry! As an entrepreneur, author, mentor, consultant and step-mum, I've been in your shoes too.

With a career spanning 20 years in the corporate world and 10 years in small businesses, I quickly realised is that if I was to succeed, I would need to level up in how I was using my time and find ways to develop extreme efficiency - without sacrificing the commitment or focus that my business demanded of me.

That's why I developed the Take Back Your Time Success Blueprint. It's equipped with 5 easy steps intentionally designed to help you increase your productivity and eliminate these time-wasting habits.  This blueprint has been the answer for me and for dozens of successful business owners like yourself. 

I know how important this is and I want to help as many people take back their time as possible, so I've made this blueprint available for FREE. 

So go ahead! Download your FREE blueprint today to start taking back your time and watch your business results skyrocket!

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Finally, I've got one question for you:

What will you do with all that extra time?

Why not join my Time Mastery Group on Facebook and let me know!