Time Management of Wasted Time

In a previous post, we emphasized the importance of a goal-achieving formula in Bryan Tracy’s “strategic time management” that consists of seven distinct steps. Mastering and becoming great at time management is very difficult. People don’t need to be great at time management to be productive, all that matters is to be able to improve and become a little more efficient every day. Time management books and articles have a lot of common messages and guidelines to follow. A great reference for time management is “Don’t Count the Yes’s, Count the No’s and Time Management Skills That Work”, a book written by Warren Greshes, Hall of Fame Speaker and top-selling Author and Expert in sales, motivation, and management.

The book details twenty time-saving tips that help you become more efficient. With a little research you’ll find out those tips are common to many books on time management and most of us know the majority if not all the tips, however, very few apply them. All twenty tips are worth applying because they can free up tremendous time during the day that you can use to do beneficial things. It is always helpful to look at one or two tips:

For example, the “Prioritize” tip is one of the most important time management tips that promote efficient growth at the same time. We have detailed in a previous post why the ABCDE prioritization method should be the first thing you do in the morning and how it can be employed to improve growth but also to help you concentrate and eliminate distraction.

Another important tip is managing “transition time” or “dead time”. As eye care professionals we have plenty of transition time during the day (time wasted with colleagues and staff, over coffee, on the phone, on messenger, in case of patient no shows, etc…). Transition time should not be wasted but rather planned in advance. Time wasted driving to work can be employed to listen to audiobooks or podcasts. The time between patients or no-shows can be employed to read your messenger or reply to emails and chat messages.