First, let’s talk about the many typical time suckers that you probably want to work on stopping right now. You’ll likely find more as you work toward discovery in your own personal situation, but most people can agree that the following are common time suckers that you should stop doing now.
1. Not Setting Goals for Every Part of Your Life
First, you should set up goals based on your morals and values for your entire life. Set life goals for your life psychologically, physically, and spiritually in each area of your life, including personal, relationships, and work. For example, if you want to be healthy, you’ll need to set healthy eating goals, healthy exercise goals, and so forth, according to the results you desire.
2. Not Planning and Scheduling What’s Important to You
Once you have identified what’s important to you, it’s essential to create a plan and make a schedule of the steps in chronological order of what you need to do to get to success and reach your goals in the time frame you’ve set up for yourself. For example, if you believe it’s important to eat dinner with the family 4 nights out of seven, what are you doing to ensure it happens? Likewise, if you want to publish an 80,000-word novel by December, what do you need to do to get there?
3. Lack of Organization and Systemization
One reason people don’t reach their goals promptly has to do with not organizing based on the real amount of time you have to do the tasks. If you really want dinner on the table at 7 pm each night, plan the meal carefully, taking the actual time it takes for things into consideration.
Plus, not creating systems with automation in place is a big time sucker. For example, there is no reason to spend hours paying bills each month when you can automate the process via your bank. You can even organize and systemize family dinner by assigning each person a task to do that ends up with dinner being on the table by 7 PM in a realistic manner.
4. Not Delegating and Always Doing Everything Yourself
Whether you’re a stay-at-home parent, a salary earner, or an entrepreneur, you can’t do everything yourself. It’s imperative to your future that you learn to delegate and stop trying to do everything yourself. There are people in your life that can help you, and if you don’t have those people yet, you can find them.
Your spouse, your children, your friends, and even people you hire can help lighten the load for you just as you do for them. However, if you’re a people-person, who is a pleaser, you can recognize this by asking yourself, “Who can help me do this task?” If you cannot come up with an answer, you have work to do building relationships with people who can help.
5. Not Setting Boundaries and Saying Yes Without Thought
This is usually related to being a people pleaser, too. Some people call these people “yes” people. You see them in every single PTA, Church Group, and volunteer opportunity. There is usually one in every well run office. This person may be seen as the “go-for,” who gets things done for others. These people are often stressed, overwhelmed, and have a low self esteem.
Many people-pleasers say yes to every single ask of them without even thinking. This is a huge time sucker because there is no reason why you need to say yes to everything. First, weigh the things people ask you to determine whether it’s worth being involved. An excellent way to decide is to have criteria for saying yes.
For example, ensure that doing this will get you closer toward your goals in each life area. Check your calendar to be sure that you really do have the time available before saying yes. Say yes with enthusiasm or no without guilt.
Now you need to look at your own life and start identifying and eliminating time wasters. Only you can truly determine what a time sucker is and what is not. For some people spending five minutes on social media is a time suck, but it might be how you schedule your downtime. It’s your time, so if you can reach the goals you set for yourself, you can choose what tasks you want to do and what responsibilities you don’t want to do.
0 Comments