Do you realize how much time is spent shaving? If you spend 5 minutes a day shaving, that adds up to over 30 minutes a week. If you spend 10 minutes a day shaving, that adds up to over an hour. Do you know what I could do with an extra hour of time? That’s two 400-word drafts! That’s hitting the gym and showering. That’s 40 pages of a good book!
Do I actually think you should forgo this aspect of basic hygiene? Maybe. Some don’t have the option. Some of you have to be ideally groomed everyday. Obviously there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s just part of the deal. But many of you don’t have to. Do you really need to shave every day? Probably not. But the bigger point is this.
There areĀ so many things – there is an overabundance of things – that we do all the time, which zap our time away, and we pay zero attention to them! Yet if we do pay attention to these little things and remove them, we could add hours back to actually getting stuff done.
For me, shaving every morning was something I came to see as wasted time, so now I only do it every 2 or 3 weeks (much to my wife’s chagrin). Turning the TV on whenever I got home turned out to be another mindless detail that drained productivity. I can relax without it. I don’t need to be sucked into half a season of F.R.I.E.N.D.S.
For others, those moments might come through chit chat at the office first thing in the morning. Going out for lunch instead of taking your own. Rewriting your to-do list instead of doing something on it. Checking Facebook or email “real quick.”
The little things we do only stay little in the moment. When you do it every day, they become time-consuming habits. We all have these habits of seemingly insignificant productivity-drainers that erode our abilities. A few drops of water might not do anything today, but a few drops of water every day over time create a canyon.
Where are you spending time on insignificant things? That time adds up! If you want to be more productive, cut those details from your routine.