“The average worker admits to frittering 3 hours per 8 hour working day, excluding lunch and breaks.’’ Muse.com
This is from a great infographic, summarising lots of research on wasted time at work. Unsurprisingly a key distraction is surfing the web, and 77% of workers with a Facebook account admit to using it during working hours.
If you were being totally honest – how much of your day do you waste – and what are your top distractions?
As I travel around the world for work, I see the evidence of wasted time everywhere, including; procrastinating, moaning, distraction, not using journey times effectively, playing games on phones, scrolling through Facebook, and worrying. Yet time and time again I hear from people that they are lacking time and need more of it! Sound familiar?
Are you stuck in ways of doing and being that don’t maximise the time you have?
At Courageous Success we know that we love to look outside of ourselves for motivation, happiness and satisfaction…more money, better house, better job, i.e. I’ll be happy when…, and also blame circumstances or things outside of ourselves when we feel we are in a negative situation, distracted or unable to focus, lacking time!
Not many of us look internally to shift our perspective on the situation we are in. We may think we do, but in my experience, no way near enough. I could waste hours drifting, distracting etc., but if I indulged in this, I’d never get everything done and create the sea change at work that is #beyourselfatwork. I have done iAM Values Tips on my phone travelling on the London Underground, written last minute creative proposals in the 10 minutes whilst waiting in receptions for meetings that have won huge deals. My train journeys provide space to whiz through my to do list on my lap top. I’d love to sometimes look out of the window, listen to music or read the paper. But I choose not to, so that I maximise my time.
How honest are you about how productive you really are, and how much of it is actually in your control?
Here are some challenging questions for you to notice if you are maximising your time or not:
- Do you have drift time? Time lost where you achieve nothing?
- If you are being truly honest, how much do you get distracted by social media each day?
- How in touch are you with when you are most productive – are you a morning person or a night owl? Schedule your work to fit in with your natural rhythms. If you are tired, often a short burst of productivity is the best thing to wake you up!
- How strong is your relationship with yourself – for example do you talk to yourself? If you had an inner EA what would they have you doing today to nail your list?
- Are you easily distracted? I have to constantly choose not to be – it’s a discipline. How good are you at it?
- Do you ‘over check’ things for mistakes rather than trusting yourself, checking the numbers and spell checking and moving on.
- How organised are you? If you were your manager what would you say could be better organised?