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Identifying Time Robbers

By Julian Campbell

lady samboDaily, as I talk with my clients, I find that one of the biggest challenges in business today is just finding the time to do all of those little things you know you should do, but "......just haven't got around to it yet". You have many great intentions for implementing so many ideas and possibilities that you know will produce exceptional results in your business but find yourself saying, "I wish I had more time for...."

No matter who you are, successful or unsuccessful, rich or economically challenged everyone has 86400 seconds each and every day. It is how we spend those valuable seconds that determines the course of our future.

"Work smarter not harder" and "have goals and action plans" are sayings we hear frequently but knowing these ideas is one thing, doing them is quite different. At the end of a hectic day, when nothing seems to have gone right, there is little compensation in reflecting on what should have been.

Here are a couple of tips which may help you be more productive. When you identify a problem your are well on your way to solving it. So what is your time problem?

The average person is unable to account for about four hours each day. Hours that are lost everyday in numerous small groups of minutes through telephone interruptions, meetings, driving time, social visiting, other people's deadlines, poor communication, unexpected interruptions, trying to do too much, excessive worry, lack of motivation, lack of delegation and procrastination. The first thing you need to do is identify the time robbers in your daily life. Doing a time log for a day or more where you account for your day in five minute sections will help you identify where those precious minutes are being lost and although you will not be able to remove them all you can minimise a lot of them.

The other tip relates to those "To Do" lists. You know, those long lists that just seem to keep getting longer. The advice here is to restrict your list to only six items. These are the six most important things you must do today. As you focus on a much smaller list and start crossing the items off you feel better and more productive. Even if you only cross off four or five of the things, you feel you've achieved something. When that list is exhausted you make another list of six things.

When you find that extra time and focus on the important, you can put your business on a positive growth path, become miles ahead of your competition and at the end of each day feel completely relaxed, knowing you have achieved something really worthwhile.

Copyright © Julian Campbell 2007

To read more of Julian's articles, return to the Articles Index

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