Here’s some common time wasters and how to control them.
Email: Email is a useful tool, but it can become time-consuming. Here’s some ideas to keep that from happening. Have a certain time of the day to check your emails and respond to them or schedule a follow-up the first time you read them. Also unsubscribe to any groups that send emails that aren’t useful to you.
Social Media: Social media is wonderful. You can connect with friends and unwind by playing FB games. It’s also a great device for promotion and communication. But if you’re not careful, it can eat hours out of your day. To keep this from happening, schedule certain times for social media and set a timer to make sure you don’t spend too much time on there. I use http://e.ggtimer.com/ to make sure I don’t go over the time allotted.
Communicating Events: Communicating about events can be a time management disaster if you do it the old-fashioned way of telephoning everyone. Make use of texting, social media events groups and calendars, and email to inform people about what’s going on.
Meetings: Meetings can be productive, but they can also be time consuming. If you call a meeting, make sure there’s a reason and stick to an agenda to make your meeting more productive.
Unimportant Tasks: Go through the things you normally do each week. Decide which tasks can be done easier and more effectively. Also delegate tasks you don’t have to do. Finally eliminate unnecessary things from your schedule.
One thing you never want to eliminate is spending time with your students. That’s not a time waster, it’s ministry.