Okay, here's a life hack you want to pay attention to. How to stop wasting so much time, we all have this problem, right? Don't you wish that, there were more hours in a day to accomplish all the things you'd like to get done? I mean, I know I do every day I start on my list. I used to have even multiple lists, scraps of paper here and there, and then obviously something on my phone or my computer. But inevitably I get sidetracked by a colleague, a seemingly urgent email or another tab opened on my browser that just calling out to me, take a look, see what I'm saying. All of a sudden at 6PM in some combination of your stomach, your family or your exercise trainer is about to take center stage. Well, I've got the prescription for you, it starts by recognizing that the biggest reason you keep running out of time is, because you're not treating the hours and minutes as the precious resource that it is. If we wasted food the way we waste time, we'd all be malnourished here are four ways to stop wasting time. And you're not going to be shocked to hear me say the first one, turn off your email. Don't just close out the program on your laptop, but also on your mobile phone, your iPad, whatever electronics are within earshot. I mean how could it possibly be a good idea to surround yourself with irresistible distractions that are sure to disrupt, instead easy enough set aside time to go through those emails. I don't know two times a day, three times a day if you want all at once, and do remember the one and done rule that applies to most email messages. Deal with it right away, don't save it for later, and delete as often as you can. By the way, while you're at it, let's not stop with email, do the same to your Facebook, your Instagram, your Snapchat, your TikTok, Twitter. I mean I'm being very unreasonable now with all this stuff, right? Social media is designed to be addictive, that's what it does and it does it really well. Sometimes the best way to stay away from the bad stuff, the addictive stuff is just say no. Okay second idea minimize meetings, don't you wish I could kind of make that happen. The mere thought of meetings is enough to trigger horrible memories of countless hours wasted. I'm going to have a life hack in a moment in another video, specifically about meetings. Now I can't ban meetings from your life or mine, but I do have two suggestions to help you pay a lower meeting tax if you will. First and this is all up to you, stopped going to meetings because you think you need to be there. I can't tell you how many times people, they go to the meeting because they think maybe they should be there, and they don't even know why they're there but they're there. Either you definitely need to be there, or you definitely don't need to be there. If you're not sure talk to people about it, don't waver on this. And second for those meetings you've got to go to, if at all possible try to schedule them back to back. Leave a little bit of time at the end of each meeting to quickly take some notes, you gotta remember the key takeaways, or any to do's that happened. But don't just spread them up, because you have a meeting from 9AM to 9:45, and then the next meeting is at 10:30. What are you going to do in that 45 minutes in between? It's not the most efficient use of your time. Okay, third idea take advantage of free time, then we all love free time. On airplanes use the time to work through something that can't be rushed, this is kind of interesting, right? I mean I'm not on airplane as much as I used to, but I still do go occasionally. And so I often write first drafts of whatever I'm working on while in the air. And what is, it's like this forced isolation for a set time period on airplanes. It actually at least for me it takes away the pressure to figure out stuff super fast, and it's a time that's nearly distraction free, less pressure, more thoughtfulness. So use that time well, and then number four set tough, but realistic deadlines for yourself. I know sometimes everyday work gets in the way of efficiency, there are ebbs and flows of various projects. Yeah you definitely can't control the people around you, but you can try to get more control over yourself, and how you do your own work. When you finish one task, move on to the next or if one project hits a roadblock, move on to the next one and come back to it again when you're fresh. This is also a good idea, try to wrap up for the day at a point that will make it easy to pick up the next day. This is something I've done in my own writing, where it's really important. I bet it's going to be important for all sorts of work, it's really tough to get started on something when you hit a roadblock. Usually we stop at the roadblock, but maybe we should stop when we're doing okay, and it's just time to stop. And I've done it again with my writing, because then the next day when I'm ready to start writing, I just picked it right up. And you just start steamrolling through, many of the most important things in life, stopping yourself from wasting time isn't rocket science. It's a combination of what should be common sense, but often isn't, but it does require a healthy dose of personal discipline. It's just not more complicated than that, which means there's no reason why you can't make it happen. Now, what are you going to do with all that extra time?
