4 Weird Timesaving Habits of Highly Successful People
A few strange tweaks could
be what you need to make your day more efficient.
Part of it was due to
health reasons--sugar is just bad for you--but there was something else behind
this decision. After repeatedly waiting in line at the Starbucks for my skinny
latte, spending a few extra seconds trundling over to the condiments bar to
empty two packets of sugar and stir started to seem like a few extra seconds
too many. Why not forgo that step and save a little time?
So just like that, I
decided I could live with drinking sugar-free coffee forever and, in return,
got a few extra seconds of my life (plus a few calories) back. It sounds so
minimal, but it became a timesaving habit that stuck.
Turns out, I'm not the only one with an odd habit like that. In this 24/7 world, some of the busiest people
I know have their own weird timesaving tricks and they've shared them with me
through the years. Here are a few of my favorites that I hope will saveyou some
time.
1. Go to the bathroom
between meetings.
This one comes courtesy of John Chambers, the
CEO of Cisco, who once told me that he does this to clear his mind.
Sometimes we are so bogged down in back-to-back meetings that not having that
moment to decompress makes us less efficient as the day wears on. Nobody
disturbs you in the loo, and nobody ever questions why you're going in the
first place, so go as many times as you like (or need).
2. Bunch email replies
together.
A little while ago, in this very publication, I read about
how Tony Hsieh of Zapposmanages his emails. He puts emails he needs
to reply to into a "yesterbox" and answers them all at once the next
morning, so that by noon, he noted, he's pretty much finished and able to focus
on the rest of the day's work. I stole his method and modified it a little--I
put a star next to all my non-urgent emails, and at the end of the day, I reply
to them in one fell swoop. That way, I know I haven't missed anything and at
the same time I can devote 100 percent focus on each correspondence rather
than try to multitask my way around all of them.
3. Use the car as your
closet or office.
Bob Greifeld, the CEO of Nasdaq, is up at the crack of dawn every day for his
commute into the city. Like many of us, he tries to fit in a workout at the gym
and says one of the ways he shaves a little time out of his morning is to change
in the car. God bless tinted windows.
The car, whether
you're driving or being driven, is often a nice refuge for when you have to do
things like change clothes or shoes, power up your phone, make phone calls, or
whatever else needs to be done. It's idle time that can be put to great use. As
for finding time to change into gym clothes, others take it one step
further--another CEO says he often sleeps in his gym clothes so that he doesn't
even need to change in the morning.
4. Keep the
"RTI" in mind.
Last year, I was
sitting with a few Berkshire shareholders at the annual meeting in Omaha.
Several of them--longtime friends--had traveled from Europe, Israel, and
elsewhere to attend the Sunday breakfast with Warren Buffett. One of their
peers hadn't come, and when I asked why, they said his calculus was very
formulaic--in the time it would have taken for him to travel to Omaha, he could
do X more hours of work to improve his business. He felt like the time invested
in the meeting wasn't going to give an attractive enough return.
Clearly his friends,
who all made the trek, didn't see it the same way. But it brings up a great way
to look at your valuable time: What is the return? I call it "RTI":
return on time invested. If you feel like the return is worth less than the
time you put into an activity or event, don't do it. I've heard of CEOs who
don't watch sports or others who never go to parties because they find the RTI
to be too low--or in other words, time wasters. So be picky about where you
spend your time and look for those things with a high RTI.
BY BETTY LIU
http://www.inc.com/betty-liu/4-weird-time-saving-habits-of-highly-successful-people.html?cid=em01020week23a
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