Maximize Your Time!

Part 1

 How habits can waste time

 

By Wendy Collier, B. Ed.

 

Summary: With this eye-opening example you will see how quickly a habit can form and why we need to erase old habits that waste time.

 

Tick, tock, tick, tock…..you ran down the clock!

 

Experts on time management have developed numerous ways to try to help us maximize our day. From day timers to computerized programs, the tools are varied and can help in many ways, if you use them.

 

Like far too many tools we don’t use the tools enough to get the most out of them. You have to take time to figure out how to implement the tools; and practice them to really get the most of your day. And this concept applies to every new idea, new experience and new tools.

 

I mean this literally! You have to use the tools until it becomes a part of your day-to-day life. We are creatures of habit and it doesn’t take long to establish a habit.

 

Here’s how quickly a habit can form: we renovated our basement and moved down there to sleep in July and continued sleeping there waiting for our upstairs bathrooms to be renovated. After it was finally done we were able to move back upstairs. It had only been 4 months but I found myself automatically going downstairs to use the bathroom. After I’d done this a few times, my husband, Kelly, asked me “don’t you like the new bathrooms up here?” I rolled my eyes and shook my head, I couldn’t believe it.

 

The challenge we all face is that we have a lot of very deep programming and instilled habits of functioning that wastes time. We need to erase these or undo them in order to establish new empowering habits of time efficiency.

 

Start by looking for areas in your day where you are “leaking time”. There are more than you know. We lose time; waiting for people, standing in line, on hold with phone calls, waiting for a website to connect, waiting for kids to get ready, reading some of the junk mail we get even though we’re really not interested, reading every e-mail getting lost in all the jokes, etc. Time these parts of your day and at the end of the day, add up those minutes. You’ll be amazed at how quickly those minutes add up to hours.

 

You already know many tips on how to manage your time better. Stop and think about the ones you used in the past that worked. Simply start using these to gain back time.

 

Page 1 / 4


1 Applies to shipping within Canada. Information about shipping policies for other countries can be found here: Payment and Delivery Information
2 Not including tax