3 Time-Wasting Mistakes that Even CEOs Make

When your calendar is packed, you think that all that time is put to good use, and that you are 100% productive. That's not always the case simply because your productivity does not depend solely upon your behaviour. Although the end results are the most important, time spend on achieving those is equally important. So what are the biggest time wasters that even high profile personalities suffer from? The first place goes out to…

  Excessive e-mail

  An average person checks his e-mail around twenty times per hour. Some of that e-mail is really quite important, some of it is just spam. Whichever it is, it takes   time to go back to work after checking your e-mail.

  Should you receive an important e-mail, you feel like you have to reply immediately and having in mind that you need at least a couple of minutes to read the      newly arrived mail, process what is being said, and another fifteen to create a careful reply, that takes a lot of time.

Relying on e-mail to collaborate with your team is time and money wasting.

The biggest danger here is poorly communicating what you want to say.

Communication is not only verbal. We communicate with our demeanor, gestures and tone of voice as well. E-mail communication lacks all of this so it can be misleading. Your e-mail could be crystal clear, but if the person on the receiving end of the conversation is not focused, you might end up exchanging a lot of e-mails trying to pass your message.

"Well, that's why we have meetings, meetings are the best solution, aren't they?" Not quite.

Pointless meetings

Meetings are being held because it's hard to reach a decision without having a general consensus of all the people involved in that decision.  It is hard to track the progress and focus on the deliverables afterwards if the whole team is not on the same page.

The only way to to really be sure if the meeting is pointless is to have it, and then decide for yourself after you see the effect. The biggest no no's when it comes to meetings are:

●     poorly written agendas

●     not focusing on the most important things

●     not covering all you needed to cover

●     chit chat

●     having it longer than it should

What you could do in order to not waste time is to focus on the most important things, send out agendas the day before and make sure everyone prepares for the meeting. And that they get there on time, stay focused and contribute. This is the only way you can minimise the number of meetings per month and don't make them time-wasters.

Constant interruptions

You've just decided to check your e-mail, saw a newsletter, clicked on a link and two hours later you find yourself reading a travel blog and daydreaming about a vacation in Greece. Although Greece is a lovely place, thinking about it when you have a deadline approaching is not a great idea. The same can be said about phone calls, various app notifications and constant browsing through social networks.

There's a better way

Collaboration is key to business success. Millions of teams suffer from lack of collaboration and they don't even know it.  Tweet

An online collaboration tool is here to provide you with the one place to create, discuss, share AND track what is being done. 

Everyone makes above mentioned mistakes, You don't have to.