5 things that make you waste time (and be less productive)

If you are an entrepreneur, you are going to feel highly identified with this. Day by day you think about how to make days longer, and of course, with this, carry out as many tasks as possible in the shortest time possible, right?

Well, we have decided to make a very short article to talk about the 5 things you currently do that make you waste your time, and you don't realize it.

1. Not setting clear priorities.

Let's separate the important from the urgent. Let's separate the operational from the strategic. You cannot be a CEO and do operational tasks. We know that sometimes it is difficult not to do these tasks because daily activities exceed us, but think that the more operational tasks you carry out, the less you think about the general vision of the company, and a managerial position is the "direction" of the company. All of this, even if it is not an expense in the company, ends up having an indirect impact on the results.

Tasks and processes have subtasks and threads, some of which can even be super complex and very long, right? Make a list. Paper, pencil, and list all the tasks, then we can help you have it online and avoid losing the paper, having to do the task of writing this list again (Unforgivable re-work). Then, give each process/task a priority number.

2. Being obsessed with multitasking.  

Let's be honest. We cannot do more than 2 or 3 tasks well at the same time. At least, in our case, we have to do a task totally focused on it and, then, move on to the next, but of course, in between, there are calls, emails, meetings, etc. This would also be multitasking, but let's not abuse this.

The most likely thing to do when doing many tasks at once is to do them sloppily, incorrectly, etc. How many times have you talked to someone for 5 minutes while you were doing something else and then you couldn't remember what they talked about? It happened to us a lot. How many times did you make a document while also making a bill of sale or a quote and then you had to review it 15 times because of the number of errors you made? It happened to us too.

So, what's the point of being multi-task if we need more time to re-work afterward?

3. The false illusion that: "I have everything written down in my mind".

When faced with anything important that comes our way during the day, sometimes even several on the same day or at the same time, we declare to ourselves: "I remember, I'm not going to forget this." ERROR. Maybe we remember the general idea, but there is a very high margin of error in some detail and/or data. And if you are a middle manager or senior manager, do you take high risks in decisions when in reality it could be zero risk? Let's do the same with our minds and tasks.

There are software tools that make this easier for us. So, relax your mind a little from so much data, and leave more room for cute and beautiful memories of your family and/or friends.

4. Make too many lists and never put them into action.

The previous point leads us to this one. Some people write down absolutely everything, even list the calories they consume and even more, but never take action to comply with the lists. As if the thought "If I make a list, the tasks take care of themselves" worked.

Not really, making lists is fine, writing everything down is fine, but not taking them into action is also being unproductive.

5. Check notifications before sleeping and before getting up.

This point is too difficult, right? Yes, it is. But we've found that when we check our email accounts before we get up, we start to worry and work before thinking about the only thing we should be thinking about is: What can we make for breakfast?

Same thing before bed. We have a hard time, even worse, if we get an email at 3 am. This makes us waste a lot of time.

We will complete this list little by little together. Are you in? You can leave your comment with something that you think makes us lose productive time and so over time, we will make the glossary of the NOs in productivity.