Susan Payton: Don’t Fall Victim to These 5 Time-Suckers

Image courtesy of Michael Marcol/ FreeDigitalPhotos.net

We each started our respective businesses because we wanted to do more of what we love. What many of us never foresaw was how difficult it sometimes is to cut through the piles of work on our desks to actually get to that thing we love to do! I can’t offer you the secret to cloning yourself (believe me; I’ve looked for it), but I can help you identify some areas you’re probably wasting more time than necessary (is it ever necessary to waste time?). Once you become aware of these time-suckers, you can free up more time to get back to running your business.

1. Social Media

If you’re like many entrepreneurs, you manage your own social media accounts for your business. How long does it take you each week do update your profiles and follow new people?

Would you be surprised to hear that I manage my own accounts, as well as accounts for clients, in less than 10 minutes a day? I’m guessing by your dropped jaw that it takes you longer than this. Here’s why:

• You’re getting distracted by cute photos of your niece while you’re on Facebook and/or
• You don’t know how to effectively manage your time spent on social media

Short of banning you on social sites, the best solution to the first time-waster is to exert a little self control. Check your personal pages before or after work, then while you’re working on your business’ social media efforts, resist temptation to read your friends’ updates.

For the second, I’ve got a great tip. First, start using Hootsuite or other social media management platform. These tools are fabulous because you can sit down for 30 minutes and write out a whole week’s worth of updates. Then just schedule them so that they’re peppered throughout the week. Spend another 5 minutes following new people. Now your Twitter stream won’t be as sporadic, and your followers will get a steady cadence of updates.

You can still check in once every day or so to respond to direct messages and mentions, but don’t be a slave to social media and feel you have to constantly check your accounts to see who tweeted you.

2. Scheduling Employees

If you have staff that have to be scheduled every week, such as in a restaurant or medical facility, you know the headache that paper schedules provide. You create one schedule. Then Beth reminds you that she asked off for next week. Joe says he doesn’t want to work Friday. So you start over again. And then there are the constant calls you take the day the schedule comes out from your staff wanting to know when they work. Sound familiar?

Technology’s got your solution here. Invest in employee scheduling software like ScheduleBase to get your staff to submit their time off requests digitally. The best part? You can email or text your employees their schedules. No more phone calls, and no more time wasted.

3. Balancing Your Checkbook/Marketing Your Business/Managing Admin

This is sort of a fill-in-the-blank time-sucker. You know that task that you absolutely hate to do. The one that takes you far longer than it should, and the one you don’t even do well. For me, it’s design. Now, I fancy myself as creative, but I remember years ago when I tried to design my own logo. What a disaster! It took days and still looked like crud. I hired a designer, and poof! Instant professional logo.

You have to start valuing your time more. I get that you want to save money, and you feel like no one will do anything as well as you. But isn’t it worth it to do less $10 an hour work so you can focus on that $1,000 an hour stuff? It’s time to delegate some of these tasks to someone who can do it faster, cheaper, and better than you.

4. Email

Seven years ago, Tim Ferriss told us to check our email less frequently. So why do we refuse to listen? I think we’ve become trained, like Pavlov’s dogs, to respond when we hear that magic ding telling us we’ve got mail. In my case, I don’t even have an audio notification, but no matter what I’m doing, I’m sure there’s a thrilling email just waiting for me in my inbox, so I interrupt what I’m working on to go check. Cue: disappointment.

Again, self-restraint is the key here. Tell yourself whatever is in your inbox can wait until you finish what you’re doing. Or even a few hours. We’ve gotten far too easy access to our email through our computers, phones, and tablets, and that’s hurting us.

5. Procrastinating

But Susan, you say, how can procrastinating waste time if I just put off something and do it later?

It might not seem like procrastinating would waste time, but it’s wasting mental energy, which, in turn, makes everything more challenging to do. You’ve got a big project due next month. You dread it. It’s huge and hard! So every time you think about it, you find an excuse not to do it.

You’d be surprised how much energy that wastes.

And the week before it’s due, you go into hyper-stress mode. You work all night to get the project done. You forsake everything else you’re supposed to be working on. Now tell me that’s not a time-waster.

Try this instead: break bigger projects into smaller, more manageable chunks. If you have to write a 6-chapter book in 6 months, make mini deadlines: one chapter each month. Break that down even further into weekly goals. If you continually put a little effort toward the bigger goal, you won’t waste as much time frantically scrambling to get it done at the end.

Now that you’ve identified your time wasters, start eliminating them and becoming more productive!