Biz Shizzle - Tame Your Time Waster

Even if you are not ADHD (I am), it’s easy to get sidelined by distractions. And when you are in business, that’s a no-no.

Distractions mean:

work doesn’t get done
clients are neglected
deadlines are missed
stress
lost revenue
time away from what’s really important

Everyone of us finds a way to waste time – especially if we are involved in tasks that are boring. We start looking for an escape and if you’re like me, that often involves the internet!

That’s an obvious one and easy to fix – shut down your browser and email. Then get cracking on your duties. Pas De Problème!

But what about less obvious time wasters? You may need to look deeply at how you are actually spending time in your business to discover other leaks that sap your productivity.

For me, there was one that was so in my face that I shouldn’t have been able to miss it. But I did. And this particular time waster was one I assumed I “had to” do. Care to guess what that was?

It was my phone.

I was an absolute slave to my telephone. From the time I got up in the morning until late at night, that sucker was on. And I would jump to answer it every time. It didn’t matter if I was in the middle of writing a post, fixing dinner or watching Project Runway – the phone rang, I obeyed the siren call. My productivity and free time were both interrupted and this was making me miserable.

Often what would happen is that I would be stuck on the horn with people who wanted to ask a ton of questions about the nature of my work – or “pick my brain” (aka get a freebie sample of my skills).

Sometimes they’d even ask me to “chat with them as a friend” which turned into a half hour free reading (they never offered to pay me for my time).

I’d also sometimes get wrapped up with someone who wanted to dump on me – even though I don’t know them from Adam. Those conversations were sometimes painful and uncomfortable – I wanted to help but ended up feeling used.

And then there were the “emergency tarot readings” – people who demanded that I drop everything right then and there and do a reading. (PS there is no such thing as an emergency tarot reading.)

Why did I do this?

It’s because I assumed that this is how business was done.

Enter Yolanda Facio, small business advisor and the author of Purpose: Build a Business You Love. I had a session with her and she’s the one who blew the lid off my phone captivity (thank you, Yolanda!).

She asked me why I felt that I needed to have that phone on all the time – and made me realize how unproductive this made me. We devised strategies so that I could get control of my time and stop letting the phone rule my world.

Here’s what I did:

My phone is OFF and all calls go straight to voicemail.
I check messages once a day and then return calls promptly. That means people sometimes need to wait a day to hear from me. It also gives me the opportunity to ignore calls that are not work related.
If someone is calling to just “chat”, I can choose to not return it. Instead, I’ll usually send an email asking if they want to book an appointment and that way avoid getting held hostage on the phone.
On my greeting, I let people know that they can reach me via email and I encourage them to visit my site for more information. (I am way more efficient with email than the phone – and all the info they need for the FAQs are right on the site.)
I also have a line directly for my loved ones and close friends – that number does not go out to the general public. EVER.

This simple fix has created more time for me to work on my projects, serve my clients and have a life!

Take some time now to recognize where you are being less efficient. Once you recognize your time leaks, it’s easy to remedy them with solutions like my phone example above.

So tell me: where are you squandering your time and what are you going to do to tame that beast?

Blessings!

Theresa