Just How Much Valuable Time Do You Waste In A Day?

The pressures on the workplace and the pace of life in the modern world has meant that time has become a vitally important commodity in all of our lives.
One of the best things about the wonders of modern communication is that we are all able to do much more with our time than ever before. Instant information is now available at the touch of a button and we can communicate with one another at any time and in any place. The amount of data available to us means information has become much easier to source.
But the internet has also meant that it has become even harder to focus on the task in hand because there are so many distractions in the workplace.
I always attempt to extract as much value as possible from each and every working day. But it’s still important for all of us to sit down and work out exactly how many hours we waste during the day on the kind of distractions and tasks that are not key to the performance of the company.
It’s a great idea to take a step back and work out just how much wasted time there is. I guarantee most of us would be amazed and more than a little shocked how many hours actually go to waste when you start to add it all up.
Of course, we all need to have downtime and it would be wrong and ultimately counter-productive to expect people to spend all of their time working without any kind of break. If you put people under relentless pressure then sooner or later their work and their productivity will suffer.
A happy workforce rather than one that is stressed and constantly working under relentless pressure will not only be more productive, but will also be more reliable and stable. Once you get into situations where employees are not happy in work then you are bound to encounter problems with stress, ill health and high levels of staff turnover.
The key to good time management is discipline. An inventory of the working day should look at how much time is spent on meetings and tasks that don’t actually add to the company’s performance or are productive.
Try to be as honest as possible and take a logical look at each meeting. Ask yourself what the aim of the meeting is and what targets have been reached. It is far too easy to fall into the trap of holding meetings out of habit; when you go down that route they can quickly become nothing more than talking shops with no discernible aim.
Personal discipline and planning is vital and one of the best tools at your disposal is the office diary. By being organised and planning ahead on daily and a weekly basis you can save yourself plenty of time and effort.
Good time management is really not that difficult to achieve and is one of the easiest things you can do to improve your own personal performance. Even with all of the many distractions in the modern office there really should be no excuses for any kind of time wasting.