Losing Time

Where are you losing time?

WAIT TIFF DIDN'T YOU ALREADY BLOG ON THIS?

Well, not exactly. While it is true I frequently blog on time wasters like email and chatting, I'm talking about something else today.

I'm in the process of revising my Time Management presentation for a webinar I will be teaching at the end of the month for PVN. While looking back through my outline I recognized that a failure to plan is a major time waster, but it still isn't the worst.

Simple inaction is the primary time waster.

I don't mean that you're doing nothing, but you're doing things that are not in line with your goals. I realized this-again-as I observed my own work habits.

As you know, two weeks ago we had a family emergency. The impact of this event affected me for more than a week. It was difficult to focus and I fell behind in my work.

Then I began wasting time...I kept rearranging my Outlook to-do list to try to figure out how to accomplish everything I had to turn in. With end of the month deadlines, client projects and blogs to write...my to-do list grew daily despite putting in ten hour days all week.

It wasn't until after midnight Sunday as I started to get my office ready for Monday morning that I looked at what I was doing. For fifteen minutes I had been moving around projects and beating myself up for things that weren't done yet. Again, I was moving my novel writing down the list of other projects.

Why didn't I have time to do all I needed to do? Because I was overplanning.

GASP!! Did I just say that?

Yes. I was over planning my day. Before each project I would try to determine if there was something else I should be doing that would be faster and more efficient. In doing that I was spending five minutes before each project second guessing myself. With over 20 things on my to-do list most days...that was a substantial time drain.

So, look at what you've been doing to increase efficiency. Are your efforts to save time really stealing your time? If you're not accomplishing all you know you could then examine these little issues.

And if you'd like to learn about Time Management I hope you'll join the PVN webinar I'm teaching.

Tiffany Colter is a writer, speaker and writing career coach who works with beginner to published writers. She can be reached through her website at www.WritingCareerCoach.com
Learn more about Tiffany's Marketing techniques on her main blog.
Common-sense money management is free at The Balanced Life website.
Read Tiffany's award winning manuscript "A Face in the Shadow" on her fiction blog.
She writes a blog for the Christian writer Tuesdays at Writer's Rest.