Are These 31 Deadly Time-Wasting Mistakes Killing Your Company?

1. Wasting Time With Suspects not Prospects

Continue to fill your pipeline, qualify each prospect that flows into your pipeline, and then after you have qualified them close the sale or move on. The last step is usually very difficult for most entrepreneurs, but this will hold true: “If you take only Yes’s and only No’s from your prospects, you will go to the bank a lot more.
John Nelson, Sales Growth Specialist, AchieveMoreSales

2. The 10 Min Meeting That Turns Into 60 Min

Tell the people in the meeting that you only want it to take “X” minutes and need to have it be on time. Sally Strebel, CEO, Best Part Ever

3. Too Much Unfocused Work?

Too many of us spend too much time working on things that aren’t really important to our business. As an entrepreneur, you have to know your basic goals. To help you stay focused, post up your goals for the quarter or the year in your office and make sure that all the work that you do is in line with reaching and completing those specific goals.
Barry Maher, Author of Filling The Glass

4. Do The “Little Projects” Take Up Most of Your Time?

Force yourself to only work on big important projects in the morning. Tell yourself you cannot move forward to do any other projects until the current project that you start in the morning is done.
Peter Geisheker, CEO, The Geisheker Group Inc.

5. Are You Busy But NOT Productive?

It is critical to decide what is most important. i.e. sales revenue, and focus on that primarily. Try to narrow your specific goal driven activity down to “goal driven activity” per day and make sure you are doing the focused tasks during the specified hours to reach the intended goal. Put all other non-productive activities aside and do them during the “non-productive” hours of the day, or outsource them to someone else.
David Bartels, Selling Smarter

6. Do you Suffer From Blackberry/iPhone ADD?

If you have a blackberry or iPhone, change the e-mail settings to “pull” only. Don’t let the little red blinking light break your concentration on your current project to tell you about the spam comment you just got on a blog post you did two months ago.
Kendall Schoenrock, Co-Founder of LTLprints

7. Where Did You Write That Note Down?

Use Dial2Do a (free voice to text service) to record notes, tasks, appointments at Remember The Milk (free on-line task organizer service) which integrates with your (free) Google calendar.
Sheryl Schuff, CPA, MBA, Productivity Expert

8. Does Checking the Mail Really Take THAT Long For You?

Go through the stack only once, throwing out junk, opening what requires your immediate attention, and filing all others where they can be acted upon as appropriate, i.e, bills in my bill pile, the organizations I financially support in my donation pile, magazines in my magazine pile, etc.
Michele Risa, BEYOND Body Mind Spirit

9. Do Phone and E-Mail Interruptions Drive You Nuts?

Set up a daily or weekly agenda of your projects/tasks. When you are ready to wrap up one thing and move to the next, consult your agenda and always have a “what’s next” kind of solution.
April Welch, Certified Professional Organizer, of Simply Organized Online

10. Spending Too Much Time on Twitter/Facebook and E-Mail?

Twitter Solution-Tweetdeck organizes twitter so you don’t feel like you consistently have to monitor a screen.
Facebook Solution- Turn off all notifications in your e-mail except friend requests. Spend a specific amount of time during the day to catch up on all of the facebook activities.
Erin Atherton, Head Bag Lady of www.durtbagz.com

11. Constantly Checking E-Mail Wasting A Lot Of Time?

Limit the number of times that you check e-mail during the day. Act on as much of the messages as you can right away and try not to leave any to be dealt with “later,” because later is always later and the message may never get dealt with. You can also use AwayFind.com in your e-mail signature so that people know how to reach you with anything critical.
Chris Akelian, http://www.Akelian.com

12. Underutilizing The Investment in Technology?

Software programs and their manuals are designed to save time, not waste it, so the best thing you can do is to extract the absolute maximum capability out of software programs you invest in. Take the extra time up front to learn how to use the powerful tools that can almost be productive as adding an employee.
Susan Carter, http://www.SuccessIdeas.com

13. Should You Really Hire FREE Interns?

You spend a ton of time finding someone good. Then you spend a ton of time training them. After the excitement period has ended (in a week or two) they realize working for free sucks and they quit. In the end you are better of doing the work yourself until you can pay someone.
Rishi, of Flying Cart

14. A Little Scattered Are We?

Create a user friendly TO DO list. Take 5 minutes at the END of the day and create the next day’s TO DO list. List all of the things you are already committed to for the day with times, places etc, at the top of the page. Underneath, cluster things into categories: e-mails, phone calls, writing projects, errands, etc. Only put on the list those things you truly expect to accomplish that day, and have phone numbers, addresses, next to the items. Print that out and have in front of you when you sit down at your desk in the morning. Do things in clusters.
Vivienne Simon, JK, CPCC, Business Coach

15. Are Too Many Ezines Cluttering Your Inbox?

Unsubscribe from at least half of the ezines you receive now…unsubscribe from any ezine for which you have > 2 back-issues waiting to be read. Pick the top 3 projects you have planned in the next 3 months and unsubscribe from any remaining ezines that aren’t related to those three projects.
Terri Zwierzynski, The Solo CEO

16. Are Some Clients Wasting Your Time?

Fire Them! Entrepreneurs must be focused on satisfying clients. Some simply cannot be satisfied. Identify which clients are your most problematic and look at the effort/profit ratio. Often times the loudest complainers are your smallest customers. Consider not working with them to sacrifice a small amount of revenue, but free up big chunks of time.
Mark Mikelat, MBA, Speaker, Trainer, Coach of Building Aspirations

17. Do You Obsess Over Your Financials?

Put all receipts in a file, or even a shoebox, and update twice a month. Or hire a bookkeeper to update.
Scott Walkinshaw, MBA, ACC, President Walkinshaw Coaching LLC

18. Do You Let People Talk With You Too Long?

Use this line when the conversation is getting too long and you have to get things done. “I actually have to be back to work in 2-3 minutes, can I call you later?” This sets a definite “time limit” in the mind of the other person that you have to make an exit soon.

19. Playing Too Much Phone Tag?

Set regular telephone hours for people to reach you at, and let all other calls go to voicemail outside of those hours. It saves your time and the time of those who want to talk to me. It also forces calls to be shorter and more efficient as both parties knows there is a limited time window.
Elizabeth Gordon, Author of The Chic Entrepreneur

20. More Than One Way To Communicate With Contacts?

Time wasted checking multiple accounts stinks. Let your contacts know that you only will respond to one form of communication…be it through e-mail/text/facebook etc.
Ungenita Prevost, Actress, Writer, Beauty Guru

21. Wasting Time On The Internet?

Ditch internet altogether on your primary working PC
Bryan C Hoffman, Business Owner, Greenhills Computer Solutions

22. Hard to Resist Those “Shiny Objects”?

Unsubscribe from unnecessary lists. Limit following “new things” to after 6pm or not at all!
Jim Donovan, Author

23. Have You Implemented Paperless Billing?

Personally, I found that switching to paperless billing with an electronic letterhead has saved me so much time. I can create them straight from Quickbooks on my Mac, or others could use Word, whatever it takes to get your invoices into a PDF. Then I send it out immediately instead of wasting time printing, stuffing envelopes, buying stamps and running to the post office. I thought I was just going eco-friendly, but I cut out some major expenses of my business.
Kaytlyn Sanders, http://www.BeneficialDesign.com

24. Details Driving You Nuts?

Work with a part-time, virtual assistant. VAs can take care of the important but time consuming responsibilities allowing the business owner to focus on the vital, income generating activities. They can do anything from data entry and appointment scheduling to phone and email screening or document formatting, to marketing and bookkeeping assistance - just about anything support related.
Katie Gutierrez, Assistant Match

25. Spending Time Putting Out Unnecessary Fires?

In the morning before doing ANY task, write down your top 4-6 tasks that you will truly complete today. It’s a “NO KIDDING” list.  Even having to return 1 ph. call means it counts as 1 task.  I put it in my daytimer but if you do on your computer, print, cut and paste to your computer monitor.  Must be visible.  Focus on 1 at time.  Putting out fires that arrive midday get moved to top of tomorrow’s list.
Jeanna Gabellini

26. Too Much Time Researching Online?

I purchased “The Internet Timer” and placed it next to my computer. Really, it’s just a simple kitchen timer. When I need to do Internet research, I set the timer; and when the bell rings, Internet research time is over!
Glory Borgenson, Borgenson Consulting, Inc.

27. Not Using Formed E-Mails?

As a sales person I often find myself sending emails with the same message to different prospects/clients.  To save time I create templates that pull in values such as first name, business name etc. in our CRM solution and simply select the template to send the email. My rule is if I’ve sent the same message more then twice I create a template.  Plus by doing this within the CRM solution all work is documented, etc!
Amy O’Rourke, Account Executive Court Trax Corp.

28. Quit Bitching Already!

Negativity is the number one productivity killer. Just think about
the time wasted “bitching” about what didn’t get done, what should
have happened and what someone did wrong. Either fix it, ask for what
you want or set a new boundary. Everything else is just DRAMA. In
addition, according to the American Journal of Medicine, recalling an
angry experience for as little as 5 minutes suppresses the immune
system for as long as 6 hours.
Marlene Chism, Founder Stop Your Drama

29. Waiting for Contracts To Be Faxed?

An Entrepreneur signs up for GotVMail’s virtual phone system. He’s free to leave his office. When the contract is faxed to him, he receives the document digitally on his Blackberry via email delivery. When the sender of the contract calls to confirm he received the contract, Bill can have that call forwarded from his office landline phone to his cellphone out in the field, saving time and allowing Bill to be more responsive to his client.
Erik Arvidson, GotVMail Communications LLC

30. Does It Take A Lot of Time to Make A Decision?

When I’m stumped on a decision, it means I haven’t set clear criteria or I’m missing information.  The criteria I fall back on is simple – one question – “If I do this, will it move me closer to my business goals, vision or mission?
Matthew Best, Best Solutions, http://www.SomedayIsland.com

31. Have an Accountability Partner?

I now have an accountability partner. We check in with each other 3 times a week to be sure that we stay on track and don’t waste time. They are short email check-ins and so far I think that we are both finding it very useful.
Jill, The Veggie Queen

By Mike Michalowicz, Author of The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur

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Tags: Productivity, Time Wasters

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 18th, 2008 at 8:00 am and is filed under Action, Focus. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.