Where Are Your Time Management Blind Spots?

What’s the most important resource you have—as an entrepreneur, a manager, a business leader, or simply as a person? Simple: It’s your time. That’s the one thing you can never get more of, the one thing that’s more precious to you than anything else. And if you really want to be successful, the trick is to use your time well, investing it only in things that add value to your business.

Most professionals tend to think they do a decent job of that, and perhaps you do. We all have our time management blind spots, though. We all have those areas where our time management skills break down, and we don’t really even realize it.

Coming to understand where you’re wasting your time—or perhaps simply not making as much of it as you could—is a key skill for any professional. It will take some thought, some analysis, some introspection, and perhaps some changed habits—but the benefits can be major!

It all starts by being honest with yourself: Where and how could you be doing better with time management?

• For a lot of professionals, the chief time waste culprit is a lack of planning. What are you going to focus on today? What are your goals? What are your priorities? Successful people sit down and draft a road map at the start of each day; this may sound at first like a waste of time, but actually it’s what you do to make sure the rest of your time is used effectively.
• Many professionals feel like they are constantly busy, but simply being busy is not the point. The point is to do things that add real value. What are your long-term and short-term goals? What are the things you want to do to create value, now, next week, and next year?
• Of course, everyday distractions tend to be some of the biggest time management blind spots. Be thoughtful, over the next couple of days, about where your time really goes. Perhaps even keep a log of how each minute is spent. You may be surprised by how much of your time is drained by checking e-mail, social media, and so on.
• Successful people are often friendly and outgoing people—and that’s great! But has small talk gotten to the point where it’s really a problem, draining too much of your invaluable time?
• Finally, the need to be in constant motion can be a time management blind spot. Do you push yourself so hard that you never take a break to recharge your batteries? If so, you may not be getting as much out of your time as you should be—due to simple exhaustion, if nothing else!

Remember: Successful people are deliberate about their time management.

This article was originally posted on RickGoodman.com.