{"id":287,"date":"2012-08-15T16:44:30","date_gmt":"2012-08-15T16:44:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/?p=287"},"modified":"2012-08-15T16:44:30","modified_gmt":"2012-08-15T16:44:30","slug":"could-you-be-wasting-some-of-your-valuable-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/could-you-be-wasting-some-of-your-valuable-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Could you be wasting some of your valuable time?"},"content":{"rendered":"

You probably think you don\u2019t have enough hours in the day to do everything you need to do in the office or on the go with your smartphone, tablet and headset.<\/a>\u00a0 Any chance some of the time you spend running your small business is nonproductive or just plain wasteful? That\u2019s what Jane Porter suggests in a recent article in \u201c7 Ways You\u2019re Wasting Time and Don\u2019t Even Know It,\u201d that ran recently in Forbes.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Porter is a freelance journalist who writes for leading business magazines. In her experience, small business owners may not realize how much time they actually waste on some tasks. She offers practical suggestions for change.<\/p>\n

Overload on administrative work? Porter believes that too often, small business owners waste time on tasks they don\u2019t like or aren\u2019t even good at \u2013 reconciling a bank statement or website maintenance are two of her examples. Better to outsource tasks like these if they aren\u2019t your cup of tea or take up too much of your time. It\u2019s far less expensive in the end.<\/p>\n

Micromanage employees:\u00a0 Are you wasting precious time hand-holding employees to make sure they do the job you want properly? Stop doing it; it\u2019s a waste of your very precious time. Harsh as it may seem, if someone on your team can\u2019t work independently, find someone who can.<\/p>\n

Reinvent the wheel: If you find it hard to let go of projects that looked promising at one point, but no longer are, ask yourself what you\u2019re hoping to get out of them. It just might be time to drop a project and move on.<\/p>\n

Repeat same things over and over:\u00a0 If you have to answer the same question from customers over and over, create a template for a standard reply. Streamline tasks like email responses to common queries, client letter, meeting agendas and invoices with templates.<\/p>\n

Porter offers a few other tips and you can read them all here.<\/a> Next time you find yourself saying, \u201cI\u2019m wasting time on this,\u201d stop and think about how you can change the situation.<\/p>\n

Any recommendations you\u2019d like to offer from your own experience about saving time during your day?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You probably think you don\u2019t have enough hours in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[510],"tags":[691,637,692],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=287"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}