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Every day we spend our time on different activities. For example our working time may include meetings, gathering information, writing documents, paying the bills, making phone calls and so on. We do not spend the whole day on one kind of tasks, but there are many different tasks to be done in one day. It means that we have to switch from one task to the next task many times in a day.

Many people tend to delay with starting the new task after they have completed the previous one. That kind of pauses will waste a considerable amount of time. For example if you delay the start of a new activity on the average by 5 minutes and there are 12 activities in your day then you will lose a whole hour. But there can be more tasks in your work day and some people waste even more time than 5 minutes before getting to the new tasks, so that kind of time loss can be even bigger.

That kind of procrastination is more likely to happen if the next task is unpleasant, difficult or time-consuming. If we do not like the idea that we have to start dealing with that task then we tend to wait until we begin with it. But procrastination will not make the things easier for us. We have to get started anyway and delaying just wastes time, which means that we get less things done in one day and it causes a threat of missing deadlines.

There are many ways of reducing procrastination. You will get started to new tasks faster if you apply the following tips:

• Motivate yourself. You have to know why you are going to perform the next task. Although it may be dull or unpleasant, but if you see that it is necessary for achieving success then it is easier to get to that task.
• Reward yourself. It is very difficult to be motivated and efficient if your life is only hard work. If you reward yourself with going to a movies or buying new shoes after successfully completing a project, then it is easier for you to motivate yourself.
• Make a plan. Think through how you are going to perform different tasks. Break them into smaller pieces. Think how you will start and finish the activity. What are the objectives? What is needed for getting a good result?
• Create time pressure. Plan your time and set end times for different activities. For each task plan time necessary to complete it, but avoid leaving to much time for a particular task. If there is a little time pressure then you are more likely to be productive and waste less time. If there is no time to waste with delaying the start, then you have to get going fast.
• Stay fresh. Low energy level causes procrastination. Make regular pauses in your work day for staying energized. During the pauses stand up from the table and do some physical exercises. Eat regularly and healthy. Avoid consuming too much fat. Eat lots of fruits and vegetables. Drink water to keep yourself hydrated and reduce your coffee intake. Have enough sleep in the night. Get to bed early and sleep for at least 7 hours a day.
• Create a “Start now!” habit. If you face a new task, then say “Start now!” to yourself. You may have to fight with your temptation to delay, but as soon as you get into new tasks you feel easy to keep going.

kristjan time management procrastination, time loss, work tasks, working time

Picture by Alan Heitz

Many people think that speed reading is meant for reading books. Of course, when speed reading was invented then there was no internet or PCs so the only way to read texts was from paper. However, things have changed a lot from that time. At present many of us read more texts from the web pages than they do from paper.

How to speed read texts from the web? Basically, there is not much difference between reading text from paper and from the computer screen. Still, there exist some additional options for increasing your reading speed from computer screen such as the possibility to change the font size.

There are different types of texts, which we read from computer. Some of them are very similar to the written documents. For example, ebooks, newspaper articles, manuals, product reviews etc. are appear usually in exactly the same wording as in the printed versions. On the other hand there are some texts on the web, which are different form printed texts. Blog posts and social media text have somewhat different structure and content. Even the articles published in places such as Ezinearticles.com are not very similar to the ones in printed media.

The amount of blog and social media texts has increased explosively during the recent year or two. This has created a huge information overload, which results in the fact that many people spend far too much time on reading that kind of texts from the web. Many people waste much of their working time on it and often it is not work-related reading. Browsing web and reading blogs is a form of procrastination for some office workers.

While I could just recommend not reading those kinds of texts in order to get more work done then this would not be the best solution. These texts can be a valuable source of information. For example, I get many of new ideas from reading blog posts. You have to be wise on reading them.

You have to be selective when reading on the web. There is a huge amount of low quality content on the web. Read only those sources which provide you something valuable. Therefore following only a limited number of blogs is a good idea. If you are searching for information and find some an interesting article of blog post then you should bookmark it before reading it. If you want to get an overview of some topic then it is better if you search for articles about it then select only the best of them for further reading and later you will read bookmarked pages. It helps you to save time as you will far often end up reading low quality texts.

There is also not too much genuine content in the blogs. Many of the posts are written about common topics and provide the reader too little new knowledge. For example if you read about how to make gifts to your girlfriend or how to loose weight or save money then you can find similar tips for it on thousands of articles or posts. You should actually read only these texts, which provide you new information, which you have not heard before.

How can you find out, which texts are worth reading? For that you have to make a quick preview of the text. It means that you will look through it at fast pace, virtually you will just let the eyes fly over it. When doing it, then focus on the following items:

• Title. Usually the title says much about the main idea of the text. If you have a feeling that the text is not right for you then you can stop reading it after the title.
• Subtitles. Blog posts and web articles have usually many subtitles, which summarize the blocks of texts. Read all of them quickly and you get a good overview of the content. Again, if you find that the text is not right for you then do not waste more time on reading it.
• First paragraph. The first 2-3 sentences usually point out the main idea of the text.

And only if you have found the content worth reading then you can read it. Read less, but more quality texts.

kristjan Speed Reading blogs, computer screen, procrastination, reading books, speed reading, web pages, working time