3 time wasting monsters

Personal conversation

This is the most dangerous monster that covertly follows you everywhere, which you always fail to notice until it’s already late. You can find this monster lurking around in your office and even in your home. It makes you feel that you are doing some important discussion, but the fact is you are not. You are just wasting time talking about your personal stuff when you should be working on the project at hand.

There is a time and place for personal discussion. Confine it there only. Do not let it disturb your work schedule.

Frequently checking e-mails

E-mails are important, and some are very important. But none of them is as important as the work you have at your hand, so it will be more fruitful to spend time on doing the work than checking mails, regularly.

Make a mail checking routine. I would suggest checking your mails once or twice a day, but if you expect important mails throughout the day or if you cannot live without browsing through your inbox then check your mail 4 times a day, at max. Do not let this monster kill your time.

Breaks

Taking breaks during a day is important, as it help you energize yourself. A break helps you remove your thought from the project, and hence get a fresh perspective on the subject matter, when you get back to it after the break. But frequent or too many breaks do not allow you to come back to the subject matter, ruining the purpose of the break itself.

Too many breaks create distraction, so avoid indulging in that. In fact, I will suggest you to make a “break taking” plan around your work schedule. This will keep you on track, and the plan will keep this “time wasting” monster contained.

These 3 monsters should be avoided at any cost, if your goal is to do anything with your life.

I am a big fan of the label feature. Currently, I am using around 125 labels and filter combination to short my mails. Labels in Gmail are such a lifesaver. It helps us organize our mails and keep the inbox tidy. You can use label along with filter option to create a rule to categorize the mails and even remove them from your inbox. I will tell you how you can use the labels.

Create a label and a filter rule

This is the very first thing to do. Let’s say you have created a label called Sweetheart, and in the filter you mention that any mail from your sweetheart’s mail ID (even more than one) should go directly to that label skipping inbox, or simply apply the label to the mails coming from her.

Color code your labels

Like me, you can also color code your labels. It makes it easy to visually scan through the kind of stuff is there. Like all my SEO newsletters have Orange code, online marketing ones has red code, and all my writing related newsletters has blue code. This has helped me visually scan through the labels.

Activate Hide read labels from Gmail lab

Click settings (you can find it near logout link in Gmail) followed by lab then scroll down to find “Hide read labels”. Enable this feature. This will help you keep the sidebar clutter free, and only labels with unread mails will be visible to you.

Using labels to search

You can also use labels as a shortcut to reach the mail you want. For this, you will need to enable “Go to label” feature from settings >> lab. (See pic for detail).

Hide Labels from subject

I personally do not like hiding labels from subjects, but not everyone shares the same view, therefore, Google has this feature to hide labels from subjects. To activate this, go to settings and then to lab, search for “Hide Labels from Subjects” and enable it (see pic). That is all you need to do, if you do not like seeing colorful labels beside subjects.

Clean up your desk, as a first option.  Keep your workstation clean and neat looking, as that will always improve your mood and increase the likelihood that you will feel better, and feeling better means productivity.  A clean work station is a happy workstation after all.

Organize that desktop, it’s not enough for your station to just be clean, but you should have everything well organized as well.  The better your organization is, the more you’ll be able to accomplish quickly.  Accomplishing your goals at a comfortable, quick pace will help you feel better, and a positive attitude will help you continue working hard and being as productive as possible.

Don’t let your email ruin your workday.  Everyone has trouble keeping up with their inboxes over the course of the day, but the key is to know when you’re too bogged down, and when it’s okay to give up on trying to keep up with everything for the day.  If you find yourself trapped within the depths of your inbox, try to find the messages that are most pressing, and concentrate on those, leaving the ones that are not as urgent for a later time.  This way you won’t feel trapped, and will be able to keep a positive productivity healthy attitude.

Finally, don’t surf the internet at work.  Reading about stories, or visiting fun websites at work can be bad for your personal morale, as it will remind you that you are stuck at work, even if you do not want to be.  Commit that time at work completely to the job, and focus more on accomplishing your tasks, and taking positives from that.  This way you stay focused, and upbeat about work, not about what else you could be doing with your time.