Today on The Startup Chat we talk about Wasting Other People’s Time.  Too often today people seem to go out of their way to be disrespectful of your time and take away that valuable, nonrenewable resource.  

Can an email get the point across in a paragraph instead of a page?  Can a meeting last 15 minutes instead of 30?  Be conscious of how you use time, especially other people’s time.

The classic example of this within a company is meetings.  A seemingly innocuous meeting can quickly add up to thousands of dollars of wasted time, efficiencies, and opportunity cost to your organization.  Try quantifying more of your activities to allow your company to stay as productive as possible.  

There are a few tactics that will allow you to waste less not only of other people’s time, but of your own as well:

Give yourself tight time slots in your business.  Less allowance will force you to be more productive.

Find a method of asynchronous communication.  Email is great for this because you choose when you participate in it.

Learn the Power of No, particularly to meetings.  It’s amazing how issues are resolved without you or can be solved over email, on your schedule.

Use your calendar to find out how you spend your days.

Use RescueTime to evaluate how your time spent on your computer is spent.

Use signs of stress and being overwhelmed as indicators that you have poor time management.

Let’s continue this discussion.  If you’re not already in our Facebook group, head over to thestartupchat.com/fb to join.  Let us know how you’re limiting your wasted time, and keeping other people from wasting your time.

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