How Do You Overcome Time Wasting In Your Business?

Waiting time, disorganized time, and now ‘surfing the internet’ are the biggest time wasting areas.




According to a recent survey conducted by America Online, and Salary.com, the average American worker wastes more than two hours per day at work (and that doesn’t include lunch) surfing the net.

This is even more relevant for the small, or home based business, where time wasting can mean the difference between success or failure.

We all have the same number of hours in a day. It's how we use those hours that make the difference in our business.

It's far too easy for self-employed individuals to fall into unproductive patterns, and unless you're working with others to establish a pace, there may not be anyone to point this out to you.

While it's true that everyone needs a little down time to recharge the internal batteries, it's also true that success is based on the steady stream of daily accomplishments.

Probably the single most time wasting problem in small business is however, being disorganized.

How Can You Get Better Organized?

To determine if you're having productivity problems, start a log at the beginning of the week, and put down during the course of each day, when you feel that you're spending time doing things that have not helped you advance, towards your short- or long-term goals.

Be diligent about your log during the week, jotting down any and all activities that you don't feel are productive.

When you check out your log at the end of the week you probably will be surprised and see very definite patterns.

Simply, by identifying ways in which you tend to waste time, you can begin to become more efficient and focused.

Those of us who work at home have a special need to schedule our activities to avoid wasting time.

Working at home, we're at the mercy of children's demands, household chores, the distraction of TV, cooking dinner in advance for the family, etc.

These activities are, of course, a natural part of life. But for a business to be successful, activity during the work day has to be dynamic and focused.

If you are still having difficulties, then there are plenty of useful pieces of software around to help. One such piece that I use myself is:

Marketing Organiser

What Do I Schedule?

Don't wait until you begin work in the morning to establish your schedule, because before you get to specific tasks, you might get sidetracked.

Try writing it out last thing at night.

Start each day with the most important thing you need to accomplish.

Focus on doing fewer things of greater importance.

Schedule a specific amount of time for the task, and stick with it until the allotted time is up.

Leave time for the unexpected.

Don't pack your schedule so tightly that one unexpected business call, throws you off for the day.

Other time wasting areas and their remedies

Use them to some purpose like reading or writing. Always double check appointment times and don’t tolerate lateness.

Surfing the Internet

This is a necessary evil, when trying to obtain relevant information.

Try to focus on a certain topic and stick to it.

Bookmark areas to come back to when you have spare time.

Give yourself a time limit to find what you are looking for and again stick to it.

Emails

What makes electronic junk mail and e-mails so maddening, is the "free" distribution of unwelcome or misleading messages to thousands of people, and the sometimes destructive use of the Internet's unprecedented efficiency.

You can spot most of these messages easily because their topics contain inflated promises, uppercase letters or multiple exclamation marks.

The identities of the senders are usually camouflaged or falsified, because people sending out garbage don't want to take responsibility for it.

Meetings

Overlong and unnecessary meetings - go prepared to meetings and insist on the same from others. This is a big source of time wasting!

Learn how to end meetings effectively.

SKIP unnecessary meetings whenever possible

Too many commitments

Delegating, listing priorities and saying ‘no’ should clear the decks.

Farm out your tasks.

Running every aspect of your business, from filing to sales calls, is wasting time and money.

Incessant telephone calls and interruptions

Introduce a system of appointments and call screening, and tell people you will call them back if you’re busy.

Time-wasting traditions

Don’t do things the way they’ve always been done if there is a better way.

Use brainstorming or an ‘ideas competition’ to generate alternative ideas.

Unclear instructions

Make sure that you are specific about what you want done, and when and how you expect it to be done

Don't hoard papers

Read them and decide immediately if you need to keep it -- don't procrastinate the decision.

Work when you are most productive

Granted, you have to conduct some of your work doing normal business hours. But if one o'clock in the morning, is when your juices flow, squeeze what you can out of the wee hours.

Calculate Your Time

Calculate what an hour of your time is worth, by adding up your monthly income, and dividing it by your work hours.

You'll realize the costs of time wasting

Automate

Automate. Don't spend hours doing what your computer can do in seconds.

Use contact management software, bookkeeping software, filing software, etc., to save time.

Have a backup system in place

All the time in the world can't help you reconstruct the data you could lose.

Clean as you go

It works in cooking -- and equally as well in the office.

Notes

Puts time wasting in business in perspective!

Makes you wonder how we find time for building a business, doesn't it?

Especially when you factor in that adult men spend 21.9 hours a week watching TV, and adult women 26.5 hours.

So what do we do about this time wasting problem?

Gaining Time

And that's by getting up early.

Dragging yourself out of bed is an extremely simple way of creating more time, but is extremely effective. If you get up one hour early for a year, you have effectively created around 10 additional working weeks.

And when you work at home on your own business, then this work directly profits you, and helps overcome the time wasting areas within your business.

Always ask yourself, "Could I be doing something else that would bring in more money?"

Unfortunately, we learn the value of time only when we recognize it is finite.

No one gives us an advance peek at when it will run out.

If we knew for sure, it would be easier to plan.

Even so, it's never too late to vow to make the very best use of the time, of every current moment we have.

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