CSB Consulting

Do you ever wonder where the day went? Do you ever feel you didn’t get anything accomplished, but you never stopped? These days happen because we haven’t been able to control Time Robbers.
Time Robbers take us away from what we should be doing. If you do not identify the culprits and create a plan to eliminate them, you will continue to waste time each day in the same way, and continue to follow the same pattern.
Time Robber Culprits fall into two categories:

We have no control over the first group happening to us, but we can control how they affect us. But, before we can minimize their control over our time, we need to identify what they are. Examples of Time Robbers that are forced on us are:

At the top of this list is Disruptions; the all time greatest Time Robber of any kind. If you learn to manage disruptions, you will utilize more of your time in a day. This is not to imply that you can or even should do away with disruptions. For most of us, if we didn’t have at least a couple of disruptions in a day, we wouldn’t have a job. The two biggest disruptions in today’s world are Email and phone calls.
Let’s take the first of these – Emails. While I am an avid believer in professional responsibility to monitor and respond to Emails in a timely manner, I would stress the key here is “in a timely manner.” What does that mean?
First, turn off the automatic alerts when Emails arrive. In Outlook, you want to turn off the pop up window. In a Mac environment, you want to turn off the widget. Why train yourself to be Pavlov’s Dog and start drooling each time the bell (alert) rings. Instead, set aside times to check your E-mail. Ideally, you should check your E-mail first thing in the morning, just before/after lunch, and just before you leave for the day. The volume of E-mail you receive will determine the amount of time you need. For those who have become addicted to checking E-mail, the first big step is to turn off the alerts. This group should check -mail once an hour and slowly wean themselves to the 3 times a day.
When you do check your E-mail, do one of the following:

Read and delete
Read, reply and delete
Read and file in an appropriate folder
Read, reply and file messages in appropriate folders.

Productivity is drastically reduced when E-mail is abused. One study recently showed that on average, people check their email up to 40 times each hour.

The next disruption; phone calls/people dropping by your office. These can be categorized into 3 types:

Unnecessary Interruptions – These occur when someone drops by unannounced. Someone may stop by to discuss what their weekend plans are, or even the outcomes of a client event. There is no useful information from this disruption. Deal with the person(s) creating the distraction and explain that you would love to discuss this but you are working on a few crucial deadlines.
Necessary Interruptions – those for which you have information or responsibility
Untimely Interruptions – necessary but come at an inconvenient or inappropriate time. These should be rescheduled.

The second group of Time Robbers we bring upon ourselves. These are things we do have control over. Several examples of self inflicted Time Robbers are:

Procrastination often happens because the task seems overwhelming to us. Henry Ford said it best with “Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs.” Whenever you do not know where to begin on a project, break it down into phases. Identify each step required to complete that phase. A few ways to ward off procrastination are:

By recognizing the things robbing you of your time and learning how to respond to each of them, you will end your day not with the question “Where did the day go?” but with the statement “Wow, look at all I accomplished today!” This frame of mind will improve your attitude and productivity.