Who has enough time in the day to do everything? Not many people can raise their hand. We can help ourselves as leaders by getting rid of the bad habits or non-essentials that can steal away our precious time. Here are biggest time wasters as a leader and how to eliminate them.
Value of time/productivity
Most of us have felt that we never have enough time in the day to get it all done. You are not alone, and we all secretly – and sometimes not so successfully – hide how frazzled we feel on the inside.
Wouldn’t it be great to leave your work stress at work? Instead of sitting at home, dreading the next day because you have a timeline that you are not going to meet?
It’s not entirely your fault: we actually are terrible at multi-tasking. Our brains are not wired to multi-task successfully, and it leaves us feeling drained. Yet some toxic office cultures makes us feel bad about not being able to manage to “do it all”.
Instead, you can use your valuable time in the most productive way possible so that you can feel like you are keeping on top of your work. When you eliminate your biggest time wasters as a leader, you will have time to be productive and get some important things off of your to-do list.
Here are the biggest time wasters as a leader, and what you can do about them
Meetings with no purpose – or agenda
When you host a meeting with no purpose – you waste everyone’s time.
Want to learn how to run a meeting that matters? Read here on how to structure a great meeting, and read additional information and tips here if your meeting is virtual.
When you sit in a meeting from one of your team members that is not chaired well, you should take the person aside and provide some feedback on how they could improve, or send an email instead.
Micromanaging low performers
Fixing mistakes, picking up work from others who are not keeping up, leaves your work unfinished.
Invest some time in quality performance reviews so that you can set out your expectations with an action plan, or the low performer can move on to another opportunity. If they are not super receptive to feedback because they do not realize their work is a problem, learn how to speak to staff who lack self awareness.
Frequent visitors
Refocusing your attention is one of the least appreciated time wasters as a leader. It can actually take up to 23 minutes to refocus your attention after a task. Feel like you get off track with people coming by your office, emailing, calling so often that you spend precious time wondering where you left off?
Use these tips to deal with disruptions at work and refocus your attention.
A do-it yourself attitude
If you don’t delegate appropriately, you waste your time on things that others can do quite competently below you. A lack of delegation will lead to heavy workloads for you and high stress.
If you feel like you do not have anyone to count on to do it right – you need to do some mentoring or find better performers.
Holding others up
How much of your current practice requires you to review deliverables and rubber stamping most decisions? Workflow should be designed to be as efficient as possible, while ensuring quality of the final product.
You may be inadvertently holding up work while people wait for your final approval. Here are some tips on how you can let go of some control and empower your team.
Working late hours
Here’s one of the biggest time wasters that ruins leader productivity! Your brain stops working at its best at a certain point in the day. The number of decisions – big AND small – have a cumulative effect where too many decisions in a short period of time leave you unable to be an effective decision maker. This is called decision making fatigue and it can have devastating effects on your decision making as a leader.
Organize your day better so that you can prioritize tasks that really need your focus, and learn to leave the office at a good time. Read more on how to cope as a leader with decision making fatigue and tips on how to maintain productivity throughout the day.
Process improvement or task overload
Don’t know how to say no? Or, you see so many opportunities to take on process improvements that your work load becomes overwhelming?
I’ve been there myself as an overly ambitious new leader. This was one of my biggest time wasters as a leader and I had to learn to step back and not try and fix everything at once.
Procrastinating
Delay the worst jobs, or put off the boring admin tasks that don’t always make you shine as a leader?
As a leader there are times where we may procrastinate an undesirable task, like providing feedback to someone you know will be upset by the news. If you do not organize your time effectively, you will get stuck doing a rush job and it will not be your best work. Look at all the time you spent on mediocre work!
Instead, plan your timelines better so that you can produce high quality because you have enough time to step back from the work and critically evaluate it and adjust. There are absolutely times as a leader where you have to rush, but this should not be every task you perform!