Starting from the humble basis of accepting that We are not robots but peoplewe can rarely be 100% efficient throughout the day, both when meeting the workday, studies or personal tasks.
However, it is very likely that at the end of the study or the study session you have the feeling that You have not advanced In your most important tasks, even if you have not stopped for a moment.
According to explained in the podcast Write About Now The writer and productivity expert Laura Vanderkam, this occurs because there are certain habits and routines that act as authentic time thievesremoving minutes and hours without you realizing. Identify and face them can make a difference between A productive day and one full of frustration that affects both your work performance and your personal well -being.
Time escapes in small distractions
The simplest thing is that the time you dedicate to a specific task ends by diluting, drop by drop, In other distractions. It may be that while you work in a project, you are distracted when you receive a notification, answer a message or check the mail.
As they commented on the Asana productivity blogeach interruption can make you lose up to 20 minutes to recover the initial concentration levels. Thus, the minutes are added and, At the end of the day, you have lost a significant amount of time In activities that were not in your plans and, what is worse, that you don’t know where all that time has gone.
These time leaks usually go unnoticed because they occur as short interruptions but, in reality, the sum of all of them has a huge impact throughout the day.
How to discover what you waste your time
The first step to combat time thieves is to become aware of them. Sometimes you know exactly what steals your timebut other times you need to analyze it thoroughly. A simple strategy is to write down for several days in what activities You use your time. This will allow you See patterns and detect habits They make you less efficient.
Check the mail As soon as the notification appears on the icon, see a video on YouTube and realize that you have been 10 in a row or send a fast message to a friend and that, without realizing it becomes a 20 -minute conversation. All sum.
Detecting and being aware of such behaviors is the first step to minimize them and avoid time leaks during Concentration periods.
Another useful tool is the Automatic monitoring. In most cases, we are not even aware of the amount of time we use in tasks. Luckily, Technology does know.
Currently, All operating systemsboth smartphones and computers, have a monitoring function of the use of applications. This function tells the time you spend daily (or weekly) in a certain application, which will help you discover if that time is reasonable Or, on the contrary, it is a time thief.
The selfish side of time
Discover that you spend several hours a day communicating with your classmates with Slack or Microsoft Teams, or seeing in a weekly graphic the time you have gathered are also ways to become aware of the time you dedicate. But much more important, an opportunity to adopt measures and reduce that time applying a “more selfish” profile. After all, Your time is a finite resource And it is necessary to learn to say no and impose limits.
If you can’t avoid certain distractions by establishing the “monk mode” for deactivate all notifications And stimuli outside your task, at least limit your access during working hours.
For example, you can adopt the strategy of “Ulysses contract“, establishing specific schedules to check emails and social networks, instead of doing so continuously. This helps avoid the habit of entering” just a moment “and end up wasting much longer than expected.
On the other hand, nonlinear communication of slack or other professional messaging applications allow to adapt the rhythm of communication to your needs. Just let your colleagues know that You need concentration breaks in which you are going to concentrate on getting your job, and that you will answer as soon as you finish it, so that they do not expect an immediate response during those periods.
Reduce meetings time can Look like a chimerabut being aware of the time you spend in video call applications such as Google Meet, Zoom or Teams can make you see the working time that takes you per day and if it is possible to reduce it. A first step is to cut in 10 minutes the usual 30 -minute stripes offered by default calendar applications.
On average, attention remains for 23 minutesso if you manage to scratch those 10 minutes to each meeting, at the end of the day Time gain is very remarkable.
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