Time 'Stealers'

Time stealers or pirates are the things we do which could be viewed as:

• Not enjoyable
• Arduous 
• Not important 
• Things that take you away from what you consider to be important 

Everyone will have a different idea or list as to what these are and just the act of writing these down can be enough to spark some ideas as to how these could be tackled.

To get you started some of the common time stealers that my groups list are:

• Not unknowing or being unsure of what to do
• Having to cover for other people (sickness, holidays, redundancy etc)
• Meeting for meeting sake
• Being interrupted (phone calls, personal visits etc)
• Poor personal planning skills 
• Lack of motivation 
• Poor focus 
• Procrastination 
• Being a perfectionist 
• Feeling 'paralysed' by the sheer volume of work 

Activity 

If you are unsure or really want to get an accurate account of these time stealers then complete a real time workplace time log (not retrospective). It is important that this is accurate and impartial. I find 30minute time slots work well for most people and it never fails to amaze me how what people think 'wastes time' and what actually does are often two very different things!