12 Time Wasters and How to Avoid Them

We’re often tempted to slide a few minutes (for me, it’s always five) to take a break and do something recreational. However, these minutes always take at least 10, and before we realise, precious time gets wasted. Take a look at how you use up — and waste — your time. Check your activities against this list:

1. Facebook, Linkedin & Twitter — No need to really explain what these sites do to any of you. If you’re reading this blog, you are smart enough to know how social media, when followed rigorously, can be a huge waste of time.  
2. Emails: Wise men say “Don’t start off your day with emails”, and I think they are right. Over reliance on emails, refreshing your inbox every five minutes is a colossal waste of time. Reply your not-so-urgent emails after lunch hours because that’s the time mind starts to wander for “juices” to keep the creativity going.
3. Self Grooming:The way you look is important. Put your time and effort to groom yourself before you step out, but spending more than five minutes on it is a way to bomb time.
4. Exercise: A workout session that runs into two hours is a waste. The researches say you can burn more calories in a rigorous 25-30 minute session.
5. Excessive Talking: If you like to explain your viewpoint to everyone you talk you, you become responsible for wasting their (and yours too!) time. Additionally, such forced-listeners will spend 91%  of their time during the talk to daydream.
6. Games – First it was Angry Birds, then came Candy Crush and now Flappy Bird… I agree playing games is recreations but  how about timing yourself? You might also want to look at your log of the past few weeks to see how much time did you literally waste on it.
7. Online Videos: YouTube videos take three-five minutes to download, another five minutes to play, all to listen/see something that you probably wouldn’t even remember after two hours. Organizations lose over $50 million per year (in wasted salaries) on this, not to count the value of time that you as an individual lost.
8. Multitasking: The buzz word of the last decade has everyone thinking that they are good at juggling multiple jobs at the same time. The truth is we are not. All human beings, with an exception of a few specially made ones, are most productive when we concentrate on one thing at a time. Don’t believe me? Think about any such day when you rushed from one job to another and thought you got too much done only to realize in the evening that your “to-do” list doesn’t have anything you can cut it from.