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Did you know that "time termites" eat up as much as 25 - 50% of your time? It's true, and in this article I'll discuss what a time termite is, as well as what the top 10 time termites are, and - most importantly! - how you can exterminate them and take back a huge amount of your time and your life.

Time termites are activities and people that "eat up" your time and destroy the beautiful design of your life. In my Time Architect model of time management, we design a life that is grounded solidly in the four cornerstones - physical, emotional, mental and spiritual. We protect these areas by understanding and applying the storm proofing principles.

Just like you design your home to withstand intruders (such as termites), you must design your life to strongly protect against the situations and people that will run right over you and eat up your life - if you let them.

Let's look at the top ten time termites, based on my unscientific experience with hundreds of clients.

1. Wasting time on trivial items - computer games, gossip, etc.
2. Waiting around to talk with the boss or manager
3. Meetings without a good agenda and/or good facilitation
4. Too many unnecessary reports to write
5. Problems in locating documents or other needed items
6. Answering unimportant phone calls & email
7. People with a negative attitude - complainers and whiners
8. Inability to say "No." That is, saying "Yes" to too many people
9. Interruptions
10. Add your own: What's your biggest time termite?

Time termites vary depending on whether you work in a huge Fortune 500 type business, or a small company or organization, or are a solo entrepreneur, but these are a representation of what steals most people's time.

As a business and executive coach I work with hundreds of high achieving business owners and professionals. In my experience, only a very energetic, intelligent and vigilant approach will work to protect your time.

Extermination tactics:

1. Values & vision: Get crystal clear on your personal values and vision. You must know what matters most to you and where you are going in order to be able to make choices that support the best use of your time.

2. Planning: When you create annual, monthly, weekly and daily goals, plan with your values and vision clearly in mind. This way, you will focus in on your highest value activities.

3. Systems: Get good systems in place. Be able to find immediately any information or tools you need in your business or organization. These systems are highly individual. Feel free to contact me for information on resources to help you get organized.

4. Boundaries: Erect strong barriers around yourself - you can think of this as a sturdy fence with an electronic gate around your house (and life) that only grants access to those people and activities that fit in with your priorities. This is a challenge to anyone who likes to think of themselves as a "nice person," which is many of us. It takes some practice to regroove our neural pathways to hold a new belief that having boundaries is not only OK, but downright healthy. (For more on strong boundaries, contact me for an article that goes into more depth on that topic.)

So get crystal clear on your values and vision, create a good plan, install excellent systems, and erect strong boundaries. When you implement just one of these suggestions each month, in a year you will have 12 awesome new habits that will help you take back 25-50% of your time...and your life. Congratulations: your time termites will have been exterminated.

Copyright 2005 Anne Alexander

Anne Alexander

Anne Alexander is President of Authentic Alternatives Business Breakthroughs Coaching and since 2002 and has coached hundreds of business owners, executives, managers and independent professionals in the U.S. and Europe as their strategic partner to reach their professional and personal goals.

Anne has over 20 years? business experience in sales, accounting, operations, customer service, project management and as a business owner. Throughout those positions she coached managers, co-workers and employees. She also worked as a Certified Business Intermediary, helping business owners sell their businesses, where she was privileged to see in-depth the challenges and successes of numerous small businesses and used her business expertise to help owners improve the salability of their businesses.

A graduate of Coach University, the oldest and largest coaching school in the world, Anne also has completed advanced coursework from the Graduate School of Corporate Coaching and the Small Business School of Coaching. She is an Associate with Assessments Now where she has been trained in the Platinum Rule Behavior Style Assessment. Anne?s B.A. (cum laude) in Social Change & Development is from the University of Wisconsin.

Anne gives workshops to professional groups, organizations and clubs including Rotary, Civitan and SCORE on coaching for high performance, time management and other business and success topics. Her e-newsletter, Ordinary Brilliance, goes out to over 4,000 subscribers every month.