Stop Wasting Time

Time is so precious yet it’s so fun to waste sometimes. As we stare at a blank wall and let time pass by its somehow relaxing to just let the sands of time slowly flow and keep your head blank for just a few minutes. Or if you prefer something with a little more interaction, you can go to the water cooler and have a sip of water, maybe chat with your office mate and talk about anything and everything. How about a simple stretch and bit of a walk around your martial arts school? The things that I’ve mentioned are just some of the guilty pleasures that we like to do when we need a mini-break, and that’s okay. Taking breaks are actually contributing to increased productivity. But if you dwell on other activities too much and it eats most of your time then you need an intervention.

Stop Wasting Time by Avoiding Multi Tasking

Are you one of those self professed multi-taskers that feel they can do everything at the same time. Based on facts, only 2% of the population can successfully multitask and the chances of you being one of them is very slim. So stop multi tasking and focus on one task at a time. You’ll finish it sooner and the quality of your work will improve.

Mobile Phones and Gadgets

Smart phones and tablets are technological wonders and have helped us stay more connected to one another. But if there is a task at hand, these gadgets can turn into time wasters. It can be fun to text and play games on these thingamajigs when you’re on your day off and you just want to relax. But when you’re at work, they become huge distractions. Every call, or beep, or ding, or vibration can cause you to pause what you’re doing and divert your attention. So put your phones and tablets on silent and non vibrate mode, set only special numbers for emergency ring tones so you’ll still hear calls just in case.

The Internet

We need the internet for work. It’s good for communicating one another, checking up on your friends and family, and being entertained if we need a break. But one thing we always forget is that, the internet is a huge vortex of unicorns and cat pictures where our short attention spans like to dwell in. Click one link, see one picture, watch one video, read one article, and it becomes this chain of time wasting activities. I’m not saying forgo all your internet needs, but if we want to stop wasting time then we must show discipline and will power. Allocate 5 minutes tops for checking social media, then back to work. Keep your website visit times limited. Or if you can’t really help yourself, then you can use certain software that can help you curb your wanting for the interweb. If you use a Mac then try SelfControl, if you use Windows, utilize SelfRestraint. These are website blocker programs that let you visit web pages but only for a certain amount of time.

We all want to be more productive, but we can’t just help ourselves when we all have these distractions to keep us from doing important things. But with will power, some adjustments, and help from computer software, we can all stop wasting time and do more better things.