It has happened to all of us — a whole working day is behind us, and we haven’t done half of the tasks we meant to do.
If your to-do list is only getting longer, yet you feel like you’ve had a hectic day, then the problem might be — you. Wasting time can happen to all of us, even when we are doing our best to be productive and efficient.
But are you even aware of all the ways you’re losing precious working hours? Here are five ways you are wasting your precious entrepreneurial hours, without even realizing it.
1. Going Around in Circles
The most significant time-waster in any business field is treating the consequences of an issue instead of the problem itself. If you have a problematic employee or a project that won’t get off the ground, it might be more efficient to remove them than to fix the consequential problems continually.
It’s like applying duct tape to a broken chair — you lose time every day when you reinforce it, and, at the end of the day, the chair is still broken. Buy a new one and move on.
The same goes for projects that aren’t profitable. You justify spending time on a dead project because you’ve already invested a lot of energy, time, and money. However, that’s a massive waste of your working hours. If it isn’t promising — cut your losses.
2. Multitasking: A Misleading Term
People think multitasking is the key to success. However, that’s not exactly true. While some people can manage multiple things at once, multitasking is a huge waste of time for the average person.
Our attention splits when we try to juggle several things at once. We are less focused on tasks at hand, and we usually end up making more mistakes. Those mistakes have to be rectified, and in the end, we end up spending more time overall than we would if we did the tasks individually.
Further, trying to multitask usually leaves us with a messy environment. A cluttered workspace is one of the central time wasters in the office. If you need five minutes to find a pen, you’re doing something wrong. Not to mention that it makes us look unprofessional and incompetent.
3. The Black Hole of Social Media
Social media is a known time waster. We think that we can spend our five-minute break on Instagram, but time flies when we’re wasting it on social media.
The same goes for face-to-face socializing. Of course, it’s vital to maintain friendly relationships with your co-workers and employees. What’s more, a quiet office is an eerie place to work at. However, socializing can quickly get out of hand. A water-cooler chat about a project can turn into an hour-long debate that isn’t even work-related in a heartbeat.
4. Meetings vs. Emails
Meetings are crucial for sharing information, managing employees, and monitoring progress. However, a significant number of meetings isn’t efficient. Some meetings don’t have an agenda that’s substantial enough to justify pulling so many people from their workstations.
Not to mention that pointless meetings waste a lot of time. It’s not just the painful hour you have to sit through — most meetings require preparation and organizing notifications for all attendees. Therefore, it’s always best to see if a meeting should be an email.
Still, not all emails are necessary either. It takes time to open your email, type in a piece of information, and send it. Sometimes, you can relay the information as a passing remark.
5. Micromanaging and Hovering
When we have a lot of work on our plate, it’s only logical to delegate. It’s more efficient that way, and it saves time. However, delegating can waste time as well if you do it wrong. When you give your employee or your co-worker a task or a project, don’t hover over them and micromanage them. That wastes both your and their time.
Still, if you’re micromanaging an employee because you know they can’t do the task at hand properly, then you should go back and look at our first “time waster.”
Parting Words
There’s always room for improvement with anything, and that’s especially true in entrepreneurship. When we are wasting time without even realizing it, we end up exhausted, and our to-do lists remain full.
The most successful teams have efficient, hard-working members. Therefore, do not miss your chance to dominate your team due to wasted time. Your working days will become much more productive if you pay attention to these five ways you’re misusing time as an entrepreneur.
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