At the end of the work day, did you get anything done? Accomplish what you were expecting to accomplish? No? What happened—why didn’t you finish the tasks you thought you would finish when you first showed up for work that morning?
Was it you? Or was it others that prevented you from getting your work done?
Jenifer Moss will tell you there are two types of time-wasters. And you can’t control one of them.
Environmental time-wasters:
- People
- Phone
- Technology
- Waiting
- Meetings
- Emergencies
You can’t control those time-wasters; well, probably not as much as you would like to be able to control them. You get interrupted by people. Your desk phone rings or your smart phone pings. Your computer decides to show you its dreaded blue screen. The meeting drags on and on.
But, you can control these time-wasters.
Self-generated time-wasters:
- Social interaction
- Acceptance
- Perfectionism
- Risk avoidance
- Disorganization
- Procrastination
You can say, “Can we chat later on our break or go out for happy hour? I have a deadline I have to meet.” You can choose to not let perfectionism stand in your way. You can look for ways to get more organized. You can stop procrastinating (unless you truly don’t know what you are supposed to do next or you don’t have the skills or knowledge to do something; if you can’t start because you don’t know the next step or don’t know how to do something, that’s not procrastinating).
Yes, you can totally take control of your self-generated time-wasters.
(From a National Seminars Training webinar, presented by Jenifer Moss, April 2014)
