I for sure do! But thinking about it, I can’t help feeling that sometimes it’s my own fault (yes you got that right – my own fault) thing is I tend to be a bit nice, I don’t like to say no, I have time for your survey and truthfully I can get side-tracked by interesting e-mails and I just have to check my emails every 60 seconds! Yes perhaps I’m my own worst enemy?
You see, a little while ago I came across an article written by Roger Bohn and James Short of University of California, San Diego. Ok, actually the article must be a year old now, but their findings must still be true.
Simply put, Bohn and Short established some mind boggling numbers (although they’re a bit hard to relate to), such as people consuming 1.3 trillion hours of information etc. Importantly they identified that the information people took in, or let’s face it tried to take in, increased annually from 1980 through 2008 by 5.4% each year and it just kind of… struck a cord with me, so… here’s my thoughts on trying to do less and get more done:
1. I do not respond to surveys and if it’s a phone call, I try not to take it or just politely say “no sorry I don’t have time”
2. I try and check my inbox 3 times a day; 09.00, noon and 16.00hrs. I work on the basis that if any mail arriving after 16.00 is that important they’ll call!
3. I know this is old school but I keep a list of all my jobs on a spreadsheet, cutting and pasting them up and down the column importance depending upon importance and urgency, what’s more I’ve started deleting the ones at the bottom! It’s much better than all the outlook reminders that distract you. Radical… err… true, but what the heck eh?
4. I leave the office for lunch and don’t take my phone!
5. When I go out with my hubby, I turn my phone off – I only have to get him to do the same
