Are You Guilty Of Getting Caught In These Time Traps?

A big challenge for leaders is being on top of time. Here are some stats for you on items that contribute to our good use of time.

• 96% of office workers are frustrated by their company’s information management, Harte-Hanks
• According to Forbes ASAP, the typical executive today wastes 150 hours a year, almost one month, searching for lost information.  For someone earning $50,000 a year, that translates to a loss of $3,842
• Typical US worker is interrupted by communications technology every 10 minutes, Institute for Future and Gallup
• 80% of papers and information that we keep, we never use, Agency Sales Magazine
• Email is increasing print volume by 40%, Document Magazine

If you look at these items we can DO something to alleviate these above time traps.

1. Companies continue to work on their information management systems and apps such as Evernote and Dropbox can help with personal information management for items relevant to your everyday work. Information management systems are improving with their search terms and functions so that workers can access the information they need quickly and easily. You can also create your own easy to access list of FAQ’s to share with your team in a simple email with the title FAQ’s and this can help with information that is needed but not easily remembered.

2. Executives often rely on their personal assistants to manage the information they need but in my consulting I see many execs relying too heavily on their assistant for information that they themselves can be storing, saving and accessing. Nothing frustrates a PA more than an exec who constantly asks for the same information that is easy for them to access on their own through using their PDA’s and technology more efficiently.

3. When working on projects that require uninterrupted focus TURN OFF your email, PDA and other electronic forms of interruption. Schedule 30 minutes up to an hour of uninterrupted project time to tackle those bigger focus needed projects.

4. Strive to become more paperless, store docs on cloud based servers, organize your email to keep electronic copies, save items as PDF’s and store them in a folder on your computer. You do not need to print just to ease your state of mind- store securely and you are good to go.

5. You do not need to print emails with today’s email management options, if you title it right and have the right folder you can always access your emails. Remember to back up your emails to a main server or an external hard drive in the event of a computer crash.

These are simple solutions to time traps that we are all guilty of getting trapped in once in a while.

It’s time to make better use of our technology, learn how to use it more efficiently and resist creating more work through printing and filing documents.