Warning: Are You Spending Too Much Time With Time Vampires And Wasting Your Time Away?

Posted by Kagisho in Conscious LivingFeb 26th, 2010 | no responses

Image courtesy of http://www.sxc.hu/photo/483719

Recently I have just completed the book, “No B.S Time Management For Entrepreneurs” by Dan Kennedy. It is a great book on time management and anyone who wants to be more productive and get more out of their time should read that book.

In the book, there are various concepts on how to get the most out of our time. One of the concepts particularly caught my attention. It states that spending too much time with Time Vampires can result in losing our valuable time and cause a drastic dip in productivity.

Time Vampires

What exactly are Time Vampires? Time Vampires are people who tried to such as much “blood” (time) out of you as you permit. They tend to leave you dry and tired at the end of the day causing you to lose valuable time to do things that are of greater value.

If you think about it, there will definitely be some Time Vampires around you. Do you have colleagues that keep interrupting you with small talks during your work hours? Or friends that talk to you for hours on the phone about gossips or force you to listen to his/her complains? If you allow them to do what they want, they will suck out as much blood as they want and leave you exhausted by the end of the day.

If you truly want to achieve your goals or excellent results in life, you have to protect your time from anyone who tries to suck it out of you. Time is a limited resource and you only have 24 hours, 1440 minutes or 86400 seconds available to you every day. Everyone is given the same amount of time everyday and people who spend it wisely will be the top achievers in their field. Whoever that can maximize the value of their given time will ultimately do better in their life than those who can’t.

How To Protect Your Time From Time Vampires

For one to achieve something, they will definitely need time. If you want to achieve anything in your life, you will need to learn how to protect your time from Time Vampires. Here are some of the ways.

1. The Courage To Say NO.

This is something that you will need to work on. Too many times, we find it hard to reject the phone calls, small talks or outings. It is okay to do these tasks from time to time but doing them too frequently is a killer to your productivity. When you know that you have a tad too much of these counterproductive tasks, you will have to say NO to them.

Some of you may find it hard to say no to others. You have to understand that if you allow others to interrupt you when you are working on your important tasks, you will not complete your them. Start setting up your steel defense against them by saying NO to them and protect your time at all cost.

2. Be Busy

Acting busy is a way to deter Time Vampires from trying to suck out your time. When they approach, be busy and make sure that they can see it. People tend to avoid disturbing others when they see others are busy and Time Vampires are the same. If they try to reach you by phone, tell them that you are busy and you have only 5 minutes to spare. They will either come straight to the point or avoid disturbing you by hanging up.

3. Disappear

If Time Vampires cannot find you, they cannot disturb you. However, this is hard to achieve as we have phones that allow others to connect to us easily. If you are working at home and you find that you are getting too many interruptions, try to work at cafes near your house. You can choose to bring your phone along or leave it out totally. If you are bringing your phone along, silence it and finish your work before returning any calls.

Parting Words

There are too many Time Vampires out there trying to take up your time and the best way for you to protect your time is to avoid them. By saying NO to trivial matters, useless chatters, gossips and whining, you will be surprised by how much more important tasks that you can complete and move faster towards your goals. I would love to know how you protect yourselves against Time Vampires. Do share with you in the comment section below and I will talk to you soon.