The average person requires 8 hours of sleep. That same person (probably) works 8 hours per day. The last 8 hours of their day are filled with Facebook intermixed with eating.
Time is your scarcest resource. Every minute you use or waste is gone. You can’t save time and use it later. The next hour is gone in 60 minutes, regardless of what you do.
There’s very little time, so use it the best you can. Six hours of sleep severely hurts productivity in the rest of the day. Get your 8 hours. Some people need more. Less than 1 of out 100 can manage on less than 8.
“How did she get so much done??”
She didn’t waste time. I’ll admit I spend time browsing the interwebs while at work. Not a great use of my time. There are also “productive” time wasters that I tend to get stuck on. I’ll list a few of them here.
I love checking and cleaning out my email. It’s a huge waste of time to keep doing it. A good practice is to check your email at SPECIFIC times each day.
- Checking statistics or metrics
I like checking the response and open rates on emails I send WAY too much. I can stare at them for 15 minutes easy without learning anything new or useful. Don’t check unless you’re going to do something with the information.
- Waiting for responses
“I’m waiting to hear back from my boss” so you should do something else that’s productive in the meantime.
There are a lot more time wasters disguised as useful because they’re work related. Think for a second: is what you’re doing really that important and useful? People who get important things done get raises.
Something To Do Today
Write down everything you need to do. Not necessarily needs done today, but if you’ve put it off, needs done this week, or more. Break down any larger projects into multiple items that can be done in less than a day. This is everything you could do during work today.
Write five things from that list that need done down on a separate, full size sheet of paper, in order that they need done the most. Stick that paper in the middle of your desk. Bonus points if you tape it in place.
This isn’t just a To Do list. Don’t work on that list out of order. Start with the first item, and don’t work on anything else until you finish. You’re only allowed to work in order.