Source: fingercheck.com
A large portion of our time is wasted and we know that. However, often times we are not aware about the types of things that waste it. We overestimate the time it takes doing something, and underestimate it for some others.
We regularly try to switch from one application to another, trying to find the best one that will boost our level of productivity and help us get more done. I think this is not something that can make a very huge difference. I do believe that if we get aware of how we really spend our time, then we have a solid ground in which we can work on. Identifying the activities that are not valuable, meaningless and can be considered as simply a burden to your productivity is very important in your quest to ruthlessly eliminate them.
An article posted on Wall Street Journal a few years ago is about some eye-opening truths that the author of this article has found after investigating her way of spending the time.
This is a short excerpt from her article:
“I soon realized I’d been lying to myself about where the time was going. What I thought was a 60-hour workweek wasn’t even close. I would have guessed I spent hours doing dishes when in fact I spent minutes. I spent long stretches of time lost on the Internet or puttering around the house, unsure exactly what I was doing.”
Having seen that, I suggest using a way of logging the way we spend our time as it gives as a real mirror of the actual way we are using it. If we plan to finish writing a work report, but do not finish it on time, it is better if we are aware of the things that we were doing instead at the time that we were supposed to be writing that report.
Google Calendar is a great application for managing a lot of calendars and I use it to plan my appointments. Now I am planning and suggesting to you too to create a new calendar which is not dedicated for planning your activities, but rather for logging and recording things that you are in fact doing. After this, we have a picture of what we should have been doing and what we did instead and notice the repeating patterns of activities or behaviors that are preventing us from being productive.
This is only a suggestion that I am thinking of using myself and I am planning to write a new article a few weeks from now, once I have tested it.
