Stop the Time Bandits

Focus Newletter, Winter 2006

Pay close attention to the 5, 10 or 15 minute windows of time that appear throughout your day. We frequently lose this time because of not being prepared to use them productively. Instead we could find ourselves engaging in idle office chatter by the water cooler. While some office conversation can be beneficial for improving office rapport and team building, this could be one of the largest time bandits of all. If we easily waste these bits of time, it could be because we’re not keeping track of all that we need to do, especially the priorities. They may have been confused in the shuffle of papers and to do lists on the desk.

Start by identifying those things which are easily completed in the 5 or 10 minutes in between meetings or before lunch. You could send a fax, leave a voice mail for someone, respond to an email or two, or file some papers. You could also review your task list for the day: re-prioritizing, adding to the list, or crossing things off. Sometimes you can take a small step in a larger project if you have outlined the steps of the project.

So don’t let time slip away — fight the time bandits! You may not always win, but you can give it a good fight and in doing so you could stand to gain more time in your day, get more accomplished and positively impact your overall productivity.