What Did You Do Today?

This is a post that really needs orange cones and police tape around it, so beware.
How efficient are you?
Really?
One way to answer that (if you didn't already) is to keep a daily record of the things you accomplished, both personal and private. I can pretty much guarantee that it will make sobering reading. Because once you break your day down into its constituent parts, you start to see just how much time is lost in the ether.
Ten minutes here, half an hour there, it all starts to add up.

We're all surrounded by people who are busy - they're the ones who complain that there just aren't enough hours in the day.
But there's a big difference between being busy and being productive. And unfortunately the 'busy fool' problem is contagious - the moment you stop being efficient with your time, you start to impact on other people's efficiency, and it spreads like a virus.
Before you know it, the whole office is running around and no-one's getting anything done.

One final thought - don't assume that, just because you keep everything logged in Outlook, you're on top of things and making the best use of your time.
Remember that Outlook doesn't manage your diary, you do.

Sorry, must dash, I'm late for a meeting.

Eat The Frog

How good are you at managing your time?
Really?
The fact is, we all have a habit of leaving the crappy jobs ‘til last.
Which means that the job we are not looking forward to hangs over us like a storm cloud, we put it off and put it off, extend our deadline, move it down the to do list.
It then starts affecting our attitude, our mood and everything else we do, it casts a shadow over the rest of our day, our week.
If you haven’t already read it, I highly recommend Eat That Frog! By Brian Tracy.
In it, he explores the positive benefits of tackling the least appealing task that faces you that day first.
If you get that horrible thing done first then everything else, as today’s kids would have it, is gravy.
Please note that I’ve even embedded the link directly to Amazon in this post, so you procrastinators have even less of an excuse.