Six biggest time thieves at work

Working full time, but at least once a week you work after hours to catch up on all your tasks? How is it possible that other people leave at four? Instead of thinking what’s wrong with you, better try to find the things that steal your precious working time.

Social media

Do you browse Facebook and Instagram over your morning coffee? Your friends are away on holidays and you keep watching their stories and funny selfies. Your thumb, scrolls through your smartphone slower and slower, while even more time is running away. During your eight working hours you check your friends’ updates at lease a couple of times. FB notifications will not leave you alone and Instagram keeps telling you about the people who’ve just liked your post? Then you know why you never have time.

– Social media are real worktime thieves. Especially when your work is connected with them. If you are logged in all the time and all the notifications come to your e-mail, it’s very difficult to keep a healthy distance – says Marta Kamińska from Solutions.Rent.

See also: 7 savoir-vivre rules in coworking

Coffee

Coffee is the “nectar of the gods” – it boost your energy and improves your mood. But why is it that no one speaks of how that little black coffee so skillfully steals our time? Meetings at the coffee machine are not particularly short, are they? Well, you need to have a brief chat, catch up on things, how are the kids, is the cat feeling better? Before you know it, the conversation goes on and on and you find yourself to be the lead speaker… This is how you loose another hour at work.

Telephones

Are you able to cut a telemarketer’s call short in a second? Good for you. But can you end a chat with your friends that quickly? Private conversations during working hours are another factor that steal minutes off your working time. Even a short conversation distracts you from your work, since you’ll be thinking about it for a while after it’s over.

Helping others

If you smile and answer “yes” to every request, then you probably have no time to perform all of your own tasks. Helping everyone makes you likeable, but does not help you achieve the goal of leaving work at 4 PM. Before you offer your help to another person, think whether you really have time for that.

Chores

Do you telework? There’s always something to be done at home. Laundry, cooking, shopping. They are supposed to only take half an hour, but it turns out you’ve spent half of your day doing them? If you are a freelancer, consider renting an office at a coworking space. You think that this is not worth it? Consider the time spent at work and the efficiency of performing your tasks.

Perfectionism

You love to be the best and you want your results to be perfect? Great. Do you perfect every detail of each project? That’s not so good. Spending eternity on improving every detail takes away your precious time. Does the project really have to be so perfect? Maybe instead of making improvements to the layout details, you should start a new task?

Read also: Five rules of a successfull business meeting 

Working without a plan

Do you start your day at work by thinking what you actually need to do? Think about all the time you can save by writing down tasks before finishing work. This will give you a checklist to start your new day with and you won’t have to try to remember what awaits you in the office today. Good planning and prioritizing will make you better organized and will allow you to use the time at work more efficiently.

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