What are the things that most impact your work day? How can you identify the time-wasting elements that drain your productivity and compromise your ability to get work done?
Here are some things that we’ve found instructive in terms of time management, as we work with local companies on staffing services and business improvements.
Meetings
When it comes to meetings, most people have a love-hate relationship with them. And it’s true you sometimes have to take the good with the bad. Meetings aren’t inherently bad — the problem is when they start to bloat from a barrage of unnecessary input, or a scattered focus.
Meetings should be a time to quickly go over core information, to motivate and address goals. They should not be a sounding board for every little thing that anyone can think of to draw out meeting times, and push the rest of the workday into an ever smaller time space.
The bottom line is that you have to be vigilant about whether meetings are hogging your work time.
Verbal One-on-Ones
Outside of meetings, you may have a time-wasting person (or two) that comes around distracting people who would otherwise be at work.
The tools that verbal time-wasters will use will run the gamut, from garden-variety workplace gossip to slightly relevant business process speculations, to various types of “emergency” scenarios that are largely made up or hyperbolic. The most productive people in a business have an eagle eye for these kinds of scenarios — they know who they work with, and they start to have a sixth sense for when a narrative is going out of control or spinning into a tangent. Then they know how to cut these communications off and get back to work.
Checking Email and Social Media
Aside from basic gabbing and other traditional forms of human interaction, digital desktop pecking and social media grazing can really hurt your productivity.
When career professionals look for the best time management tips, one of the first ones is to isolate tasks into time “boxes”. That means when you’re focused on some core activity, you’re not answering the phone, checking Facebook or scanning your email inbox.
The nature of email and social media is that it’s extremely easy to spend almost your whole day looking at and updating various conversations or interactions that aren’t completely necessary — and this is one of the best ways to get really behind at work. So take this time management tip to the bank and don’t let your social media and email time keep you from getting other things done.
Problems with Software Installation and Use
Here is another major area of time-wasting that people might not always think of when they attempt to work on their time management.
Technologies are inherently glitchy — they’re great when they work, but they can also add a lot of complexity and headaches.
Anytime you’re dealing with a new software technology, or even if you’re just trying to use the same workstation that you’ve used for years, problems with software and hardware are going to come up. It might be a bad mouse, a faulty keyboard, or a slow computer that has become slower with age. You might have problems with viruses and malware. Or you might have a problem finding your favorite function in a new operating system.
The time-wasting happens when you go about trying to fix the problem yourself. Like any other kind of DIY activity, this can take you a lot longer than it would to consult a specialist professional and ask them for help. So think about whether messing around with IT systems is taking key time away from the core activities that your job entails.
About Full Steam Staffing
Full Steam Staffing is a full-service employment agency focused on providing clerical and light industrial staffing solutions to manufacturers, distribution centers and other organizations that need qualified, reliable workers. If you are looking for a new job in Modesto, California, browse our available opportunities or contact our team today!