Stop doing list – The Little Things
Written by Julia Bickerstaff // February 11, 2014 // Daily Juice // No comments
Little things you can STOP doing to get more done
I’ve been thinking about things I can stop doing. Not just to make time for new things but to make time for all the stuff I want or need to do!
While I’ve thought about BIG things to stop doing (more on that in a later blog post) I’ve had a whole lot of fun thinking about the little things.
Stuff like, um, looking at Facebook. I spend quite a bit of time on The Business Bakery Facebook page and our Kitchen at The Business Bakery private Facebook group – and that’s all good. But I also spend easily half an hour a day just browsing through my personal newsfeed and hopping off to a few upworthy videos etc. Actually, maybe half an hour is a bit conservative. Make that half an hour twice a day.
Which is one hour a day
Which is 365 hours a year
Which is the equivalent of 52 seven-hour work days!
Sheesh!
So Facebook (or general playing on my phone*!) has gone on my ‘Stop doing’ list.
What else?
Well I’m a chatterbox. If someone calls me I can easily spend half an hour on the phone for a conversation that could be done in 5 minutes. It’s part of what make me, me, so I can’t cut it out altogether. But I can shrink it a bit.
So now I’ve got a timer and after 10 mins of the call I tell my phone buddy that I’ve got to go. It’s fine. Everyone’s happy. And I get an extra 20 mins to do other stuff.
Hmm. Let’s say I do two of those calls a day. Five days a week, 52 weeks a year. That’s 173 hours. The equivalent of almost 25 seven hour work days saved!
Riiiiiiight!
If you’d asked me before I did this little experiment, I’d have said I didn’t have ANY spare time in my schedule. But then I found these two little STOP DOINGS that will save me the equivalent of 77 work days. I’m a little bit shocked!
It’s not that I’m going to turn into an automaton. Or even necessarily do work in those 77 hours. I’ve got a pile of books by my bedside and a list of friends who I’d love to chat with. So maybe I’ll just do that instead.
Really it doesn’t matter what I STOP doing and what I start doing. I’m just happy to swap things I actively want to do for the junky type stuff I’ve just been doing out of habit.
Fancy having a go at this too?! What little things could YOU stop doing?!
*PS I’ve taken this super-seriously and now I put my phone away in a drawer when I’m home so that I’m not tempted to go and play!
PPS Here’s a tip from Jude in reply to reading the post! If you want to leave a VOICE comment you can TOO! Just click on the speak pipe thing on the right hand side of this page!
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