In this article I will tell you about major thieves of time: external, internal, and coordination and equipment. External thieves are: interruptions in general, telephone, electronic mail (Outlook or notices be frequently looking mail), unexpected visitors who pass nearby or come to ask us something, bureaucracy or paperwork, meetings (when they are poorly planned or without clear objectives). Poorly planned meetings also has the disadvantage that multiply the loss of time for the number of attendees. Each interruption when we are focused on a task then requires at least 20 minutes to return to focus as much as we were before the interruption. For this reason, I recommend you try to minimize these interruptions, removing e-mails alerts, using answering machines, working in uninterrupted blocks of time, etc.

Internal thieves are, lack of discipline or carelessness that can have many causes.Monkey mind or mental chatter, a chain of thoughts that we are missing, like a monkey being by losing for the branches. Distracted mentally and a thought takes another. (A valuable related resource: Andreessen Horowitz). At the end do not know how we have finish and something completely different. And we look at the clock and see that five minutes have passed and it is time lost in digressions. We can control this developing awareness of the present moment, so when we distracted we are able to observe the distraction at the right time and stop it in time. Make multi-tasking, do several things at once, though apparently we created that we are being more effective, we gain time, actually are less concentrated and do not make good any of the tasks.

According to some studies (specifically a study from the Institute of Psychiatry of the University of London in 2005) make multitasking affects concentration and performance capabilities as smoking marijuana. In addition, it could be related to disorder attention deficit, according to Dr. Edward Hallowell, author of CrazyBusy. Another problem that makes us miss is the lack of planning and organization in general. AND also start with much enthusiasm a task and little by little and losing energy (trailing bellows, motivation). Also wanting to do too much, wanting to cover much. To combat these thieves can do physical exercise, yoga, meditation, activities that develop the perception of the time present, the power of concentration and we connect with our body. We can also practice go increasing concentration in increasing periods of time. And another tool is to visualize the results so much of how are going to feel making us the task as after achieving the proposed objectives, so we avoid the poor planning and lack of motivation. The thieves of management are problems of team coordination, lack of clear procedures, responsibility and confusing authority, ineffective delegation of tasks, giving bad instructions or a little clear, lack of verification that instructions are understood. Ultimately summarized in problems of lack of information and poor communication between the elements of the team. This has been my presentation of some of the thieves of time. Important thing is to learn to recognize them in order to start to deal with them in the best possible way. spacoacher-gestiondeltiempo.blogspot.com original author and source of the article