This is a list of 17 things you shouldn’t be doing any more because they waste time. Old habits die hard and it can be difficult to shift yourself from an old familiar way of doing something to a new, better way.
Take a look at the list and see if there is anything you can change to help make you more productive. If you have any suggestions please add them in the comments.
- Manually Depositing a Paycheck — That is what direct deposit is for. If you spend 15 minutes every two weeks dealing with depositing your paycheck that is 65 hours over the next 10 years. Put this time to better use.
- Writing Checks for Bills — That is what the bill pay service from your bank is for. Use this time for something worthwhile.
- Partially Filling Up with Gas — Yes it might go down 3 cents next week, but how much is your time really worth.
- Looking for your Keys or Cellphone — Always put them in the same place (hook by the door, etc).
- Unpacking your Laptop Power Adaptor — If you go from work to home with your laptop, get an extra adaptor for each work area so you don’t have to unpack and crawl under the desk each time.
- Check Multiple Email Boxes — Get a program that will show you all your email in one place or filter by individual accounts. Apple Mail, Gmail and several other products do this.
- Watching Commercials — Use Tivo to skip them. Use Netflix and just skip television all together. Buy the shows you want to watch off iTunes. If you had a friend who spent 20% to 30% of your time trying to sell you things you didn’t really need, would you put up with it? (If you have a friend in network marketing, you may have already experienced this.)
- Losing Telephone Numbers — Your cell phone should sync with your computer. We are past the days where a phone only held 25
numbers. If someone calls, take the few seconds to record their name in your phone, so it will be transferred next time you sync your computer. - Commuting to College — Take your classes online. Spend your commute time studying instead of driving.
- Commuting Through Heavy Traffic — Talk to your boss about working from home–even for just a few days a week. Shift your schedule to miss rush hour.
- Dialing into Voice Mail — Get your voicemail setup to send you messages as email attachments that way you only have to check one mailbox.
- Backing Up to CDs or Disks — Get an external hard drive. It will be fast enough that maybe you’ll go ahead and backup more often. Plus if you do it right, you can create a working version of your entire computer on the hard drive. If you laptop is stolen you can start working from your last backup with all your programs and settings just as they were. (Here are some more tips about relying on technology.)
- Visiting Lots of Blogs — Use a news reader like Google Reader. Most people don’t realize how much time they waste looking at the same sites over and over again to see if there is anything new. With a newsreader you’ll know whenever something new is posted.
- Removing Spyware — Use a computer or web browser that doesn’t get infected.
- Wasting Time in the Car — Subscribe to podcasts and get a connector for your MP3 player in your car. Spend your time learning instead of just sitting there driving.
- Getting Lost in the Car — If you spend a lot of time driving to unfamiliar areas, go ahead and invest in a GPS with routing capabilities or figure out how to use your cell phone as a GPS. That way you can spend your time focusing on your work instead of honing your navigation skills.
- Clubbing Baby Seals — Just in case this applies to you, this would be a good thing to stop as well.
Other posts you might enjoy:
- The Iron Chef Productivity Fable
- Convince Your Boss to Let You Work From Home
- The Rat Experiment – Managing Other’s Expectations
- Social Glass Ceiling
- Two Types of Technology Users
FYI: You can get Productivity501 fed directly into Google Reader or other RSS reader here:
It’s sad that you consider everything in life must be done productively.
“Wasting Time in the Car — Subscribe to podcasts and get a connector for your MP3 player in your car. Spend your time learning instead of just sitting there driving.”
That’s what pushed me over the age.. dude you just got to relax, just because something you are doing isn’t making your life more productive doesn’t mean it’s a waste of time.
Sometimes it is nice to just drive around to get out of the house or relieve stress. Listening to music in the car isn’t a waste of time either. Get a life, buddy.
@Narek – I definitely take time to relax. I haven’t started my Relaxing501 site yet. :) When I relax I like to really relax by going skiing, hiking, off-roading, exploring a foreign country etc. I have probably taken more vacation time already this year than most people do in an entire 12 months.
However you make a very important point that I think I’ll address in a future post. Being super productive is pointless if it doesn’t give you more time to do the things you enjoy. To me being busy means you always have something you have to do. Being productive means accomplishing things quickly so you have lots of time to spend on the things that are really important to you.
Leave car keys on a hook by the door?! Isn’t that just saving time for people that break into your house just so they can steal your car keys? (we have that here, maybe it’s not caught on there yet).
A dishonest employer will find it much easier, faster, and safer to steal your paycheck deductions and your retirement money.
For example, just because they withhold taxes and insurance premiums doesn’t mean that they will actually forward those deductions to the proper payee.
And don’t even get me started on 401k fraud. Go to the DOL web site for thousands of cases where they are pursuing companies that stole the retirement money they were entrusted with.
mark is OBVIOUSLY relaxed, to put up with (and respond politely to!) the rude and ignorant comments that people have been spouting, in response to a post intended to be HELPFUL. get a life, indeed.
If you want to read some scary stuff, go here
http://www.dol.gov/ebsa/newsroom/main.html
Every single day the DOL has to sue one or more companies for stealing the retirement and health insurance assets of their employers.
Makes you wonder how many companies have not been caught and successfully sued yet. I suspect this is just the tip of the iceberg.
@Ron – While some companies are malicious, some end up stealing retirement benefits just because their finance department is unorganized. I worked for a company once that never could get my retirement contribution right. They always corrected it once I pointed out there error, but I wasted a tremendous amount of time just recalculating everything to double check them. My finance advisor kept looking at what was going on, shaking his head and saying, “they really can’t do things like this, it’s illegal”.
It was illegal, but not because they were trying to take my money–they were just trying to run things like they did when they only employed 5 people and a lot of things were slipping through the cracks.
Great tips. I’m going to work with my real estate staff to implement some of these tools to save them time. That way they can spend more time selling!
You could save literally MINUTES by implementing these suggestions!
For women: file your nails once a week and use transparent nail polish. Life’s too short to worry about touching up your manicure all the time.
Not bad at all. I couldn’t believe you got me on the baby seals thing though!
It’s almost like you’ve been spying on me my whole life. I’d swear you were if it hadn’t been for the last one. I haven’t clubbed a seal since PETA wooped on me.
:)
WOW! This post was a bigger waste of time than any of those things.
Hi Mark,
I agree with you about the keys on the hook, but prefer to deposit checks the old-fashioned way: in person and by hand. I don’t know why that is, but maybe I enjoy the trip to the bank and visiting with Vinnie the Zany Bank Teller.
@Dina – If I try to deposit my checks in person it doesn’t get done. I switched to direct deposit years ago when I realized I had 3 paychecks in my Jeep just waiting to be deposited. I was always busy with other things and it was easier to automate that part.
I also travel a lot so the checks never seemed to be in the right place at the right time to deposit.
If you can make it to the bank and enjoy the interaction by all means do it!
Number 17 will be a hard one to give up.
@SteveD – But just think of how much time you’d have if you don’t have to spend all that time looking for seals! :)
8 & 14 can be exclusive. I use Linux on my laptop. My PDA (bought while still a Windows user) uses Windows Mobile. There is, as yet, no Rosetta stone for them. Had I bought a Palm Pilot, I’d have been ‘in like Flynn’. When XP took a hosing after downloading MSIE7, I had seen enough … and loaded up Ubuntu Linux. Thus, no synch between PDA and laptop.
It’s sad to say, but I have a lot of trouble with the last one.
I stopped reading in number one, direct deposit is NOT something YOU can do, the company that gives you that pay check HAS TO DO IT, and it carries a cost. Some companies do not do it due to one or more of the following reasons.
1.- Cost, each direct deposit is associated to a transaction cost.
2.- Availability of funds, some companies treat their money as actives, therefore they DO NOT have the cash at front to put in the bank 48 hours before the deposit. But with a check this funds move from the profitable account to the paying account upon deposit. (lots of cents in here)
3.- Payroll software, companies that run their own payroll, may have to update to newer version in order to do such thing, that is another ocst and the ones that use some type of payroll service will have an extra cost for this service.
There, my point is that YOU can not control it. therefore I did not read number 2 forward. If you missed number 1.. you are done.
@Manny – Many people work at places that offer direct deposit, but they have never signed up for it. So yes, if your company doesn’t offer direct deposit, it isn’t an option for you. Obviously it is expected that readers will not try to follow suggestions that don’t apply to them.
While there is a transaction costs associated with direct deposit, most companies I have worked with find that it is cheaper in the long run than running physical checks.
I have yet to work with a business that didn’t want to do direct deposit because they were trying to use the time between writing the check and when it gets deposited to make extra money. Have you actually worked with a company that didn’t do direct deposit for that reason? It seems like the only places it would really help would be large companies–the ones who have the most incentive to save money by using direct deposit to simplify payroll.
@Mark , I have work not for one but 2 companies that DID not offer direct deposit, in the first one (about 10 to 11 years ago) they removed the direct deposit option, never gave an official reason for it, but some of us, close to the finance people knew the reason. When making direct deposit, the money had to be available in the BANK for transfers 24 hours in advance, (let’s say Thursday noon, for Friday noon pay), when they converted (3000+ employees) to check (mailed out on thursday, yes the stamp cost was WAY smaller than bank transaction fee) the checks would get to employees house friday, but employee would not get to checkmore likely until friday late, and POSSIBLY deposit it on Saturday which in turn would make funds available Monday or Tuesday… if you push the scenario a bit, you get cash in hand for almost an extra week.. times 3000 employees… etc etc.. you make the numbers..
The second company I worked for that did this was immediately after the last one and I was surprised they were offering direct deposit, which I enjoyed for about 2 years, but all of the sudden they stopped it… investigating why (my position allowed my to question the CFO) he simple said that the money was better in company’s possession until in employees possession that in the bank’s arks…
Now, maybe I should have continued to read the rest of the tips, I give you that.. some of them I actually do not see how people can live NOT DOING .. like checks online, podcast, newsreaders, skipping commercials, backups, email your voice mail, but my absolute favorite… REMOVAL OF SPYWARE! … that was so funny :) I confess that I have not had to clean a single computer from viruses or spyware since 1998 when I first got in love with red hat …. and now, many moons later, (not red hat anymore) I continue to be free of these time wasters .. .. sorry I did not read it all before.. reading your blog, not a waste of time at all today .. :)
18. Stop reading frivolous beyond the obvious productivity posts like this one. who wrote this? embarassing.
@Andrew – Was there seriously not a single item on the list that was useful to you? I’m not trying to say that the post is just marvelous, but most people found at least one item interesting. If nothing was useful, I apologize for wasting your time.
Any suggestions how to set up voicemails so they show up in my inbox?
I like #15 :-) good idea to hear podcast while driving.
@Denise – Vonage, Google Voice, and Skydeck will all do this for you.
Thankfully I read the last one wrong.
I rather enjoy going to clubs with baby seals. Their cuteness helps me with the ladies.
Ok, you were going strong for about 16 points, then totally lost me. Clubbing baby seals is a necessary activity to:
A. Keep the seals from overrunning society
B. Destroy cuteness
C. Release a few gallons of testosterone.
Good tips. I am going to start with number 17 straight away!
I couldn’t agree more with using an RSS reader! Once I started following more than 1 blog I had to find something to streamline it.
Item #18….Stop commenting and re-commenting on people’s blogs. If someone already said this, I apologize because I didn’t take time to read all the comments.
“Commuting to College — Take your classes online. Spend your commute time studying instead of driving.”
This is just wrong. Classroom instruction can not be replaced.
Great stuff, thanks. I’m guilty of #5 and 17!
1-16 = Great tips.
re #17 … How about “stop buying products made from baby seals”? People aren’t doing that for jollies; there’s a market for the skin and/or meat.
Ha, give me more tips. The 17 things mentioned, I haven’t done that for a long time or I didn’t do it before (clubbing baby seals). Still don’t have enough time to do everything I want.
luckily for me, my digital camera was stolen at New Year’s. why was that lucky? I loved my camera and replaced it with the same but newer model and now I have two sets of cords & battery chargers. I use my camera a lot for my job (I’m in communications and I also write a blog for them) and until I remembered I had two sets, I wasted a lot of time forgetting the cord at home, or having my camera die on me during an important event. now I’m prepared!
another thing I’ve been working towards is having all of my bills paid automatically, either straight from my account or my credit card. I have a couple of bills that I always forget, and so while I feel better physically paying the bill myself (I just feel it helps me keep tabs on things better), it’s become cheaper to let them automatically pay themselves. and luckily for me I’m Canadian, so I don’t have any of that “omigod I’m gonna get scammed” paranoia that Steve has.
I’m surprised that nobody has pointed out that if you drop your external hard drive, you may lose everything. sure, same goes for your laptop, but I dropped my external hard drive the day I got it and transferred all of my movies to it. lost everything! when I go to back up my important stuff, I’ll do it at least occasionally on CD as well. just to be sure. but the majority yes, on hard drive. I do agree.
Great post. Many of these things are quite obvious, but the obvious is usually overlooked! Thanks for simple commom sense.
@Collette – The same thing happened to me with my video camera. The extra charger sure comes in handy. I have on permanently setup where I need it for video conferencing and another that goes in the bag when I need to take it somewhere.
@Jeff Huber – I agree to a point, however I’m working on my second Master’s degree and I just can’t afford to spend the time in a car that going to a class room would require–particularly because I live in Kansas and the college I’m taking classes from is in Cambridge, MA. Many people who can’t fit college into their schedule just can’t afford the commute time.
Brilliant point about maximizing the car ride. I even take my bike to work on nice weather days to make the commute a little bit longer. I have a tremendous amount of non-fiction mp3’s that I listen to on the ride. University on Wheels as Brian Tracy used to say.
Jungle disk and Amazon Web Services work cross platform for offsite backup.
Other people smarter than I have noted if you’re not backed up in 3 places…at least one offsite, then you’re not backed up. What if something physically happens at your house (or both drives at the same time)?
Re tip #13: I actually wasted so much more time using Google Reader than visiting blogs. GR was awesome, but I have a tendency to turn everything into work; I’d have to read EVERY SINGLE POST that came through the RSS feed, and that is quite overwhelming. Now I keep the blogs on a drop-down post in my Firefox menu bar and visit them leisurely. I also have a list on my blogspot (in a blog roll) that tells me how recently the blogs have been updated, so I’m not double-checking something that hasn’t been updated.
I completely disagree with number 9 and 17. Baby seals are squishy :D
I agree with Jeff Huber that class room instruction cannot be replaced. You will always learn less and it will take you much more time when you study at home than when you can educate and be educated by your class mates. Taking your classes online should only be done if a) it’s a light course, b) commuting would take you more than double the time the class would take, and c) you have the necessarily discipline to cover the lack of class hours.
I agree with the other points though. Especially 8) regarding the phone numbers I’ll have to look into at some point. Not sure if I can sync my old phone…
Great Post.
Already do 1,2,3,4,5.
Wish to do 6.
Plan to do 7.
Do not do the rest. But looks like I should start some time. :)
That’s me in a nutshell.
Cheers!
~Anand
I think 15 should be rethought. Focus should be on the road. Doing anything else reduces reaction time.
1. If there were such a thing as a computer that never got infected with spyware, adware, etc… then it would be the only one people would buy.
2. For most of my classes after first year, it would have been a complete waste of money to take them online.
Great list. In terms of backup, make it automated too. One less to worry about or take time doing. mozy, carbonite tonido + TonidoPlug, jungle disk, iDisk.
tons of external NAS HD options too plus drives are so cheap now. mobile drives are now in large capacities as well.
but remember the 3×3 rule. 3 backups in 3 different locations like home, work and safety deposit box.
@Okey…
1. If you give an average computer user three computers, one running Linux, one OS X, and one Windows XP it is unlikely that they will all have the same amount of spyware and adware after a few months of usage.
2. It probably depends on what you are studying, but for many people once you’ve had the undergraduate experience, it makes a lot of sense to use distance education for your advanced degrees.
@Colin – I understand your point. I don’t listen to podcasts very often when driving in a town or city. However, on the highways I think podcasts help keep me more alert because I don’t “zone out”. It may not work that way for everyone.
@Tijl – Well I would be looking at a 23 hour commute for the classes I’m taking so the distance option is a huge timesaver for me. :)
#9 is just ridiculous. One of the most important things I got out of my ocurse was the networking and brainstorming.