Three Important Tips for Wasting Lots of Time at Work - Time Management

Do you have a need to waste lots of time at work? Most of us are on the lookout for a tip or two from time to time, right? Here are three important tips, free of charge by the way, to aid you in being very inefficient, less productive and to help you become a real important time wasting liability to your organization.

1. Classically condition yourself to check e-mail. I call it "Pavlov's E-mail Syndrome." But this is a good syndrome because it will help you waste more time than you could imagine. Pavlov was a scientist who conducted an experiment where he would present a restrained dog a bowl of food. The dog would immediately begin to salivate in anticipation of eating. He would then pair the food with the ringing of a bell. Eventually he would only ring the bell and the dog would continue to salivate.

It isn't very hard to develop the syndrome, that's why this is my number one tip. All you have to do is make sure you set every bell and notification you possibly can in your e-mail application to tell you an e-mail has arrived and then check it immediately. As a result, you will soon begin to salivate yourself every time an e-mail arrives. As soon as you do you will start a journey that is sure to disrupt any flow you might have been in and guarantee you won't get back on tasks for another 10 or 20 minutes or more.

2. You must check cnn.com, usatoday.com, espn.com or any web page of your choice first thing in the morning. Think about it, this has the potential to really help you waste lots of time. Since the morning is typically a time with fewer distractions, since people are just getting settled for the day, this one activity absolutely ensures you take advantage of this quiet time by wasting lots of time reading story after story. Then later on when things get busy, you can get lots of interruptions that waste more time. This tip really does maximize your time wasting activities. Trust me, I know.

3. Put off the most important and difficult things first. Nobody likes doing important and difficult things any way. And by putting them off, you will find your day is filled with things that don't mean a whole lot. Besides, if you put them off they might disappear, right? And the biggest benefit is you will begin to lose more and more energy throughout the day, feel like you accomplished nothing and become more and more grumpy. Each of these will propel you to a huge lack of motivation, guaranteeing more time wasted!

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If you enjoyed this post and would like to see more like it, click on any of the posts below.

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Mike Rogers

Comments

[Dick Handshaw]

I enjoyed the article. The addiction to email is especially annoying when you are sitting in an important meeting and people are holding their hands under the table staring down. Really, can't they at least waste time on their own time? I would have answered sooner, but I had to check out msn.com first.

As for the last one, I would like to pass on one of my favorite quotes from Jim Robinson of Partners in Cahnge. He says "you should never put off the important for the urgent". With that said, I need to get back to work.

[Mike Rogers]

Thanks Dick. Great comments. I love it to when people try to be discrete about wasting time : )Love the quote.

Mike

[Tag Your Friends]

Time management is really very essential for us.It helps in leaving a life better way.You write such a nice article.

[Fuzzi Bunz]

That is main think about Time Management. It helps in leaving a life better way. Above three tips really very useful to everyone. I like your article.