Time vampires!!!!  We all have them!

By Bevv Beirl

They can be people or busy work to avoid things we don't want to do but know we must.  They can be time we spend in the car or on the phone. 

What are your time vampires?  How can you get rid of them and enjoy a more enriched and productive life?

Choose three days out of any week and keep a log of your activities at 15-minute intervals from the time you get out of bed in the morning until you go to sleep that night.  At the end on the third day go back and review your log.  You will be amazed.  Your time vampires will flash like a neon sign.  Now what do you do?  Especially if one of your time vampires happens to be a person?

The three biggest vampires that usually reveal themselves are phone calls, e-mails and television.  It will take some discipline and determination, but you can at least shrink these bandits.

Phone:
Get caller ID and /or an answering machine.  Make it a rule to not answer the phone before checking the ID for emergencies or expected calls.  Inform friends and family that you return calls at a designated time in the evening.  This is especially important if you work from your home.  Our friends and family can steal big chunks of time and we feel obligated to give it to them.  What you must remember is that every time you stop what you are doing to chat or visit with someone on the phone, you apply pressure to yourself, become stressed, and feel guilty for neglecting your duties.

E-mail:
Make it a policy to check and respond to your e-mail only 2 times a day.  Set up mail boxes to sort jokes, business, and personal correspondence to read at a later time.  One of my tricks is to print (on scrap paper) everything that I would like to read but don’t have time to do at that particular moment.  I keep a box on my desk and toss the printed items into that box.  Every time I leave the house, I grab a few of those items to read while I’m sitting at a red light, waiting to go into a meeting or at the end of the day when I’m relaxing. It’s also a great use of time spent waiting in doctor’s offices.

Television:
Turn it off --- now that’s “cold turkey”.  Television not only robs us of valuable time, it is full of negative and manipulative language that our subconscious could do without.  If it is hard to go “cold turkey”, then limit your viewing time to one hour a night.  You can be sure that you will choose the hour of viewing time carefully.

There are many other time vampires.  Don’t try to get rid of them all at once. Eliminate them slowly and you will be amazed at how much time you have left at the end of the day to do … 
WHATEVER YOU WANT.