Time management: Guilty pleasures and time wasters.

Next week we are going to dive into how to manage your day by beginning with the end in mind but this week I want to focus on those guilty pleasure and time sucks that are limiting our ability to maximize the time we have in our day. We all are guilty of having thing in our lives that do absolutely nothing for our productivity (Social media, online shopping) . While these guilty pleasures are fun ways to distract yourself from your daily stresses, the majority of them are designed specifically to keep you engaged indefinitely. Scrolling without an end, automatically starting the next episode, showing what other people who looked at that item are also looking at, these strategies are designed to prolong your time spend on these tasks.

We’re not telling you not to do these things that you find enjoyable, but what we are suggesting is that your productivity will not get any better by continuing to spend unlimited amounts of time engaging in these behaviors.

The strategy?

Stopping these practices altogether is simply not realistic. Keep your guilty pleasures, but assign a time for that activity.

Step 1:

Think through your day and be honest with how much time you waste on average with your guilty pleasures.

Step 2:

Come up with an amount of time that you think you can reasonably spend daily on these activities.

Step 3:

Set up limits for those activities on your phone to the designated amount of time you wish to spend. If you don’t have that ability, set a timer.

Step 4:

Slowly realize exactly how much time you’ve gained back into your day for more productive activities.