Find the Leaks in Your Day

Photo by koalazymonkey

Ask anyone why they aren’t achieving their goals or spending their days doing what they love, and most people will tell you that they just don’t have the time. I know, I’ve always been one of these people. The problem is this just doesn’t make much sense.

If you take a moment to think about that phrase, I just don’t have time, it’s pretty obvious that we all have 24 hours in a day. The problem is that most of us don’t use those hours very effectively. Most of us waste our time messing around or if we are accomplishing, it’s usually low impact tasks.

Sure it might feel like you’ve gotten a lot done today, but have you actually taken a few moments and seen exactly where your time is going?

You can forget all the time management systems you see on the bookstore shelf and their promises of easily achieving 5 times as much as the next guy if you don’t even know where your time is going now. You may have some habits that just need to go out the window.

This is really a very simple exercise, but it can make such a huge difference in how much important stuff you get done each day and how much free time and energy you have at the end of the day. This will take relatively little work and can be as complicated or easy as you like it to be. You can use an excel sheet or fancy program, or just go with my favorite, a pen and paper.

Set up a log sheet, for me it’s a pen and paper I carry around during the day, and keep it with you everywhere you go. Now just log each time you work on something different, and each time you are interrupted or get on to check email or twitter or facebook. After just a few days, it’s very evident that most of us waste a lot of time checking social media or working on low impact tasks.

Now at the end of each day, make a list of all the high impact tasks you accomplished. These are things that are big, or make a big difference. The things you are usually avoiding with little tasks or time wasters. How many high impact tasks are there? It’s usually less than you thought.

When I first experimented with this in my own life, I was astounded. I found that no matter how hard I thought I worked, or how focused I thought I was, I was accomplishing only 1-2 high impact tasks per week! 1-2 per week! No wonder I never felt like I could make headway on my lists.

There were days when I felt like I had gotten a lot done and I figured I could relax the next day, but when I looked at the log, most of what I had gotten done was low impact menial tasks. Granted, low impact tasks often still need to be done, but getting them done would have been much more satisfying if I had already accomplished something big and important.

Since doing this time logging, I now try to start each day with 1 high impact task, I “eat that frog” as Brian Tracy says, and I am much more diligent about my time. I try to task any useless stuff for the end of the day when I am not as creative or energetic. Stuff like email, facebook, twitter, and other useless time wasters are all done at the end of the day. After all, these aren’t high impact tasks. Sure sometimes an email comes through that is high impact, but that isn’t often enough to warrant replying to all the low impact ones through out my day.

Think about it this way, if you were carrying 100 lbs and you had the opportunity to shed weight each day, which would you rather shed, 1 pound (email and other menial tasks) or 25-50 lbs. (bigger high impact tasks.) The answer should be obvious.

If it isn’t getting you closer to your goals or making a difference in you workload, why are you wasting so much time? It’s probably not your fault. You haven’t seen the leaks yet. Start logging your time and focus on working on more high impact tasks while cutting time wasters out of your life. It will make a huge difference in your productivity and your energy levels without much work.

Have a Fantasmagoric Day!

Ryan

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