Three MORE time-management mistakes you don’t realize you’re making.
Isn’t it special that there are so many ways to misuse your precious time? In case you didn’t find any of your personal favorite weak spots in the post earlier this week, see if any of the following sound familiar.
1. Living in clutter.
While many people feel that too much order stifles their creativity, too much clutter can have the same result. If you’re surrounded by files and piles, all clamoring for your attention, you’re likely to waste a lot of time being tempted by all of them and trying to decide which to concentrate on now. If your brain is stuffed full of great ideas, it’s going to likewise be hard to ignore them and focus on the task at hand.
Clear the decks – both physically and mentally – by keeping your work area clear of everything except information pertaining to your current, high-impact project.
If you believe that a clean desk is the sign of a sick mind, you can have the best of both worlds: Arrange your work space so that your beloved piles are behind you. They’ll still be accessible, but they won’t be staring at you and tempting you to lose focus.
2. Preferring comfort to results.
Doing quick and easy tasks at the expense of complex and demanding ones is a great way to stay busy and accomplish nothing.
I can’t remember who said, “If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten,” but I’ve never forgotten the lesson. If you’re in the habit of doing only the easy stuff, you’re likely to get the same mediocre results so many other entrepreneurs get.
On the other hand, if you choose to do what’s too uncomfortable for most people, your results will far surpass most others’ results, as well as your own results from those wimpy days when you, too, took the easy route.
3. Calling it “time management.”
Time is an intangible. How can you possibly manage it? The answer is, You can’t.
What you can effectively manage are your activities. Forget about time management and shift your mindset to activity management.
What will pay off for your business? In what way? What do you need to do to make that happen? These are the questions you’ll want to answer to make the most of your most precious and scarce resource: your time.
Have you started to get a handle on how you might being in control of your day? Do you see that there’s a way off the hamster wheel of activity-without-progress? If so, woohoo for you!!
On the other hand, if you’re still huffing and puffing trying to figure out how to implement this whole activity management concept, now it’s really time to use the box in the upper right corner of this page to request your own 5-step Take Action Now System™. Do it now. Stop being busy and start getting results.
By the way, thanks to elizabeyth for posting her image of the clock at the Musee d’Orsay on Flickr.com.
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