Banish your time wasters to save 2 hours a week

Guest post by Deborah White

Are you one of those people who just can’t get a handle on their time? I was like that until God changed my mind about it. The shift happened when I joined a Lose it for Life group and I carried that same thought process over to how I spent my time.

I realized that my body was just a vehicle to do God’s work and that my body was borrowed at best. I was challenged to do the best that I could with it and with my time. Time was just like my body; if I didn’t take care of it, I would certainly lose the privilege of using it.

Time became more precious to me and the biggest aha came when I realized how powerful a gift it was.

Today I want to draw your attention to something that we don’t immediately start thinking of when we want to get in control of our busy lives. How do you waste your time?

A time waster moment is basically the things that eat into your time unnecessarily and are the single greatest barrier to effective time management. This is because they can be hard to spot and are often trivial things on the list of what is most important.

You will know that your cup is full of trivial things eating your time when you start feeling too busy or your life is out of whack. But let’s just focus on one area of time, so that you have something to take away from this today, rather than getting too general and not having any specifics to start changing.

Here are just a few time wasters:

• Lack of planning or poor planning – What system could you start or change?
  • Procrastination – Most of the reason that this happens is that we are overwhelmed with what we have to do. Get a spiral notebook to hold all those thoughts spinning in your head. Divide this list into categories and start working that list. Chop-chop!
  • Not delegating – No one person can be good at everything. You need to delegate tasks that unnecessarily consume your time. Moms, it is time to get those kids to start cleaning their own bathroom! Trust me, once you start to share your “to do’s,” an incredible shift happens, FREEING you to be more you.
  • Interruptions – Don’t let clutter and noise eat into your productive time. When you are interrupted, it takes six to eight minutes to get back to the zone or space in your head that you were before you were stopped. Guard your time; it can only be used once. Enjoy the richness of focus, as in today’s world it is a luxury.

These are just a few of the time wasters that could be affecting your time and I have many more specifically to share. If you find that you are not doing the things that are most important to you, then you need to look at these four time stealers first. It will give you some breathing room to then be able to shift your schedule. By doing this, you can add two more hours to play with or to play in.

Deborah White is a Business Owner, Certified Life Coach, Mentor, Teacher, Speaker and Author. Deborah is passionate about helping working moms create balance in their lives.

She is a gifted communicator who offers inspiration, motivation and encourage to all those who are within 3 feet of her. With a high emphasis on time and how it is spent, she will work with her clients to take overwhelm out of their lives and follow simple systems that give them hours of time back each month to focus on what is most important to them. That is why she is called The Time Balance Coach. You can find out more about Deborah at a Matter of Balance at www.AMatterofBalanceCoaching.com.