to do list

How To Find The Time Stealers And Stop Them Cold

What do your fondest dreams look like? Are they filled with success? If you are not seeing those dreams come true, try as you may, you might have a thief in the midst.

A thief? Yes. That is what a time stealer is – a thief! Time stealers rob your days of productivity. Days of lost time can lead to weeks and, before you know it, even months. Find the time stealers today and stop them cold. Put productivity back into you life and get back on track to reach those fabulous goals.

Tip: What you are looking for is not the unexpected interruptions – such as your child being sick and needing your attention. What you are looking for are those avoidable time-stealers – like browsing Pinterest for an hour – that should be put off till a better time or eliminated all together.

To discover just where your time is going, keep a time log. Time logs help us to step back to see the big picture. Are you losing time on the same activities every day? Are those activities of value or should they be eliminated? And, if they are of value, is there a way to control them so that they don’t eat up the time you should work? First identify, then decide. The time log won’t make choices for you but it will give you a view of what is going on.

If productivity is low and you are not achieving your goals fast enough, you may have time stealers in the way. Find them and get back on the road to #success! #tips Share on X

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How To Make A Time Log The Old Fashioned Way

1. Gather your tools: paper and a pen or pencil. Do not make your time log electronically. All too often we get on our smart phones or tablets and that is where our time stealers lurk! Put the devices aside and write it down.

2. Write the day and date at the top of the sheet.

3. Keep track of what you do all day long, by times.

For example:

9:00 am poured cup of coffee
9:05 am checked email and answered some
9:30 am answered phone call
9:40 am checked Twitter etc.
9:45 am let the dog out
9:50 am ordered dog food from Amazon
10:00 am wrote checks to pay bills
11:00 am ordered more checks online

4. Evaluate. At the end of the morning, and again at the end of the day, take a look. Did something swallow up your time and take you off course? What was it that you should have completed and did not get done? If you stay with logging your time long enough, you will start to find some patterns that, when changed, will improve your productivity.

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How To Keep A Weekly Time Log

Another method is to keep daily or weekly overview logs. Rather than chart every minute of the day, write down your daily accomplishments.

When you are keeping this kind of log, first make a to-do list. This list records what needs to be done daily or weekly. As you complete a task, check it off on your list then write it on the weekly time log with the day it was accomplished. At the end of the week, look at your to do list and compare it with your “done list.” In theory, they should look the same. When you get good at it, you will start getting more done than you had expected. Add those bonus achievements to your log.

So, what time stealers are in your life? Have you found a good way to handle them?

Enjoy!

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New Year's Resolution – What To Do First

When Things Don't Get Done

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By Sinea Pies

How’s your To-Do List? Some days mine is awesome, a total success. Each task boasts that it’s “done” with a beautiful check-mark by its side.

Other days, it’s a disaster. I want to hide it. Tear it up. BURN it. Forget it all. Those are the days that, simply put, things don’t get done.

Remembering that our lives are a work in progress helps. Nothing’s perfect. If it were, we wouldn’t need lists…we’d be so fine-tuned that the tasks would be virtually completed as fast as they showed up.

That’s an imaginary world.
In the real world, we need our lists.

Lists help us to:

Focus our attention

Plan implementation

Finish the job

But how about those days that the unplanned for occurs? There can be so many things come up that totally need our attention but were never expected. A sick child. Drop-in company. Something breaks (an appliance? a car?) You know.

When those days occur – and they will – turn your “To Do List” in to a “Ta-Done List.” How’s that? Just add the things that you DID do to your To Do List and check THEM off, proving that your day was not a total loss…just redirected.

It might look something like this:

Note that the three items that did get done were ADDED to the list after they took place – now making the To Do List a Ta-Done List.

Everything you planned to do still needs to be done but it feels so much better to see what you did with your time. In this case, taking care of Johnny was far more important than washing a kitchen floor and it took all day (and probably into the night, too).

When “those days” happen – and they will – be sure to add what you DID to your list and boldly check it off. See? You ARE a success. Your day WAS productive…just reinvented, that’s all. Tomorrow will be another day and, with it, another wonderful list.

What kind of lists do you use the most?

Tell us how you do it!

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