I want everybody to take a moment now and analyze the time they spent throughout the day. You are going to compare important tasks against non-important tasks. Or is layman terms: time you spent being effective and productive to time you spent moving papers around.

Nearly everybody says they don’t have enough time to accomplish what they really want. But how many actually say ‘I tried’ ? The reason they don’t is not because they have a lot of time to spare and are just too lazy to try. It is because they fill up their time with unimportant tasks (aka moving paper from stack A to stack B). In fact I would be willing to bet that 80% of the time spent during an average persons day yields 20% of that days productive results.

This misuse of time extends from peoples personal lives to their work as well. If a person sat at their desk all day typing, with a frustrated look upon their face. Everybody would assume they are working incredibly and deserve a raise. When in reality that individual could have been doing nothing but typing the alphabet over and over, maybe even throwing some numbers in. There is an incorrect perception that being busy is the same thing as being productive. You should get this notion out of your head, don’t spend your whole day being busy instead spend half of your day being productive.

I will admit that I am guilty of betraying these beliefs (this is quickly changing). Just before writing this article, I had opened a couple tabs in my browser to check some traffic and advertising stats. Just as I finished checking them I realized that learning that new information did not allow me to do anything new. I had wasted 1 minuet staring at numbers that will not change anything else I do today. There is little doubt in my mind that that wasted time takes up a lot more then 1 minuet of my day.

Try and think of little tasks you do that you could cut out of your life to save time. Maybe its as simple as checking your email a few times less or maybe it is not listening to customers insult you at work. By terminating this “time filler” you will be one significant step closer to reaching your goals and dreams.

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Filed under: Personal Development