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Hi Reader,

Last week, I spent almost three full days setting up a new online shared site.

Three days. For just one site.

What a time suck.

By the end of day two I was questioning my career path, and whether I should just run away and chase my childhood dream of becoming a professional sailor.

Don’t get me wrong, an online shared site is a great storage system with plenty of benefits once it’s up and running, keeping all team documents neatly organized in one place.

But when you already have a mountain of other priorities, sinking that much time into setup feels like watching your productivity evaporate into thin air.

What's a time suck?

The formal definition is “an activity to which one devotes a lot of time that might be better or more productively spent doing other things.”

In other words, it’s a giant, black, endless hole that somehow manages to suck us in every time.

Some people might think of the internet itself as a time suck, which I don’t agree with. However, certain aspects of the internet can make time just poof, disappear before our eyes. Like setting up file folders and moving documents from the many different places they were stored before I took over the project.

And besides the internet, I’ve even had to extract files from a CEO’s desktop that no one else could access. I’ve also dug through piles on their desk to find the one signed paper contract we needed for a change request that never got uploaded.

Talk about a real time suck. Digging through an executive’s paper stacks for a missing contract is truly next level.

Time angels

So, back to my shared site setup tasks that were taking up far too much of my time. Over virtual coffee one morning, a colleague casually mentioned that they “knew a person.” And this person is an online shared site expert!

They instantly became my time angel.

Within a few hours, my time angel transformed my site into something far more cohesive than what I had built, complete with organized document libraries and proper access levels.

Thanks to that help, I could get back to what I really needed to focus on last week: identifying the risks that could bring my large, complex technical project crashing down.

Avoid the time suck

What other time sucks are out there, waiting to steal our precious productivity?

A couple examples include commutes that stretch on forever, endless vegetable chopping, washing dishes, and yes, even talkative mother-in-laws. (Only if you don’t get along with yours. Fortunately, I really enjoyed chatting with mine.)

So how do you steer clear of time sucks?

Here are a few ideas for handling the ones mentioned in this article:

• Commutes – Record your to-do list as you drive, or listen to something motivating so you arrive at work ready to tackle the day.
• Vegetable chopping – Use a food processor, or even better, recruit a teenager eager to dive into that new podcast they just discovered.
• Dishes – Crank up the music and invite anyone you live with to help, taking turns showing off your best dance moves. It works like a charm every time.
• Mother-in-laws – If replacing one isn’t an option, try to keep conversations under an hour, once a week.
• And finally, online shared sites – Find a “time angel” who is your go-to expert, or collaborate with a colleague to figure things out together.

Time sucks are everywhere, but the secret is knowing which ones to fight and which ones to outsource.

Your time is too valuable to watch disappear.

Focus on the tasks that truly matter.

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