10 Common Time Management Mistakes that Steal Your Energy
Avoid these ten time-management mistakes and restore your energy so you can have more of what’s most important to you.
Your time is your most valuable resource. As a leader, each day is an opportunity to create magic. But the reality is, you may be juggling a hundred urgent tasks, putting out one fire after another instead of enjoying clarity and the freedom to focus on the task at hand.
Your reality might look like waking up daily before dawn and also struggling to finish urgent tasks before midnight.
It could look like overbooking yourself with nonessential meetings and tasks that you could get someone else to do, while putting your real work on the backburner.
In my experience, something earth shattering usually has to happen in life before we realize how valuable our time is. For me, it was the moment my mother passed away. I realized how temporary life is and how much our time is limited, and vowed to stop wasting it on things that were not making me feel happy, alive or aligned with purpose.
This realization was what led me to quit my job and start a business. And along the way, I had to learn the hard way about managing my time.
So here are the most common mistakes I’ve made, and the mistakes my clients struggle with the most.
10 Common Time Management Mistakes
1. Ignoring your energy.
Have you ever noticed that you feel more energized at certain times of the day, and depleted at other times?
I find that for myself, I like to use my mornings for journaling, writing and creating. But I have friends and colleagues who love to schedule networking and meetings bright and early in the morning.
That works for their energy cycles, but not mine. I prefer to meet with others and have my client calls in the late morning and early afternoon when my energy works best for those activities.
Your energy cycles may change throughout the week as well. I’ve noticed that Thursdays are lower energy days for me compared with Mondays. On Mondays I often work for 8 to 10 hours, but then give myself more space on Thursdays and Fridays.
Pay attention to your energy cycles and schedule yourself in the way that works best for you.
Is it a fountain or a drain?
Pay attention to what (or who) drains your energy. We all have certain energy drainers in our lives. Pay attention to what drains you and see what you can do to either eliminate the drains or handle them in a better way.
What replenishes your energy? Figure out what your energy replenishers are and add more of them to your schedule.
2. You aren’t respecting sleep
Prioritizing sleep is essential for your success because it supports your energy levels. Maybe you aren’t someone who feels you need a lot of sleep? Go with what you need, but don’t try to hustle your way out of sleeping because it always backfires into illness or a cold or low creativity.
Are you letting yourself get enough hours of sleep?
Are you losing sleep because you have something on your mind? Or maybe you have been waking up in the night and can’t fall back to sleep. Don’t ignore these sleep issues. Make sleep a priority and do whatever it takes to get enough restful sleep.
Everything is harder if you are always tired.
3. You don’t give yourself enough breaks
When you don’t give yourself enough breaks throughout the day and weeks, you start burning energy instead of creating energy. This is a cause of burnout.
It’s common to try to push through and avoid taking a break. Or maybe you feel guilty about taking a break.
But you are more productive when you allow yourself more breaks. Your brain works best when it is fresh and regulated, and a break can be more productive than pushing through tedious tasks when you can’t concentrate.
You can schedule your breaks ahead of time, and then respect them. Or you can go with the flow and let yourself take a break whenever you feel you need it. I recommend doing both, so that you always have a break to look forward to.
4. You underestimate how long something will take, and then get stressed about it when it takes longer
I’ve done this, and I have clients that do this regularly. It is often helpful to overestimate how long something is going to take, that way you finish early instead of always running around feeling like you are late or running behind. Everything is harder when you are always running late. This causes unnecessary stress.
Over-estimate the amount of time something will take. Give yourself more time, and then you will naturally get faster.
5. You have bad boundaries with yourself and others.
Do you say yes to things when they are really maybes? Do you have a hard time with overcommitting to things you aren’t sure about, or feel you should do?
If so, you need to clean up your boundaries. The solution is to start getting comfortable with saying no to all the things that feel like “shoulds” or things that you only say yes to because you don’t want to disappoint someone else.
Do you say yes to coffee meetings or lunches when you have work to do? Do you always say yes when someone needs your help, but then put your responsibilities on the backburner?
Decide what your boundaries are and stick to them.
6. You are a multitasker and never slow down enough to focus
When something is important, you need to be able to focus on it.
But what tends to happen is you think everything is important so you try to multitask and focus on 2 or 3 “important” things at once.
And when you do this, you end up focusing on nothing.
And when you don’t focus, you waste time and get stressed out and overwhelmed by all the things you haven’t been able to focus on.
7. You allow distractions and time wasters.
This could fit into the bad boundary category or the multitasking category, but I feel like it deserves its own section. What distractions are you allowing into your life?
If you find yourself being distracted or unfocused, it could just be that you need a proper break, or to do something enjoyable like reading a book.
But when you find yourself being distracted by the same things on a regular basis, it’s time to evaluate and remove them from your day.
8. You put your health habits on the back burner
This is so common when you get too busy. Maybe you stop taking breaks or stop taking walks. Maybe you find yourself sitting all day long without enough movement?
Or maybe you forget to eat good food until you are starving and then have fast food instead, on a regular basis.
Your health is your true wealth, so decide what you want your healthy habits to be and plan for them.
9. You don’t prioritize what’s most important to you
What is the most important to you?
I like to list three of the most important things to myself. If those three things aren’t getting time in my day, there’s a problem.
For example, when you zoom out and look at your life, let’s say the three top priorities to you are something like these: 1. Personal Relationships 2. Health 3. Career. If you are focusing all of your time on your career and your personal relationships and health get neglected, you’re going to feel stressed and off balance.
Prioritize what’s most important to you, and then see where your energy is being wasted.
10. You don’t delegate
When you are afraid to delegate tasks, you end up getting stuck, overwhelmed and stressed out.
Not delegating is about the fear of not being in control and I understand that it is hard to delegate at times, but this is one of the most common problems I see that stops you from going from good to great.
It’s hard to give up the control you have over doing things your way, yourself, especially when you have built something on your own.
It’s common with business owners who are afraid to trust someone else to take on some responsibilities. But it’s the only way to keep growing, because you have the same number of hours as you’ve always had, and there’s only so much you can personally do in your 24 hours.
The first step is to decide that you will figure out a way to start trusting others enough so that you can delegate. Then, you can begin to let others help you build what you are building so you can go from good to the ultimate greatness.
If you are struggling with not having enough time to do what’s most important to you, book a call with me and we will discuss ways I can help you get your time and energy back.