Each of us have our own share of bad habits that we acquired during our life. Some we are aware of, others we don’t realize we’re doing. Just by observing my actions for couple of days I’ve observed quite a few bad habits that I’d like changed, and I’ve also seen them done by my friends. I imagine that quite a few of these bad habits might be yours as well.

Changing bad habits can be quite a pain, as you have to pay attention and recognize them as soon as they show up and give yourself a mental slap (don’t make it too hard), every time you’re about to make one.

Here are a few of the bad habits I’ve seen done in myself or my friends, and how you can change them.

1. Not being on time at meetings

I usually arrive 5 minutes early to a meeting. Having to wait for 10 minutes after the set time, or even half an hour as a lady friend of mine usually is late, wastes my time and makes me question how serious is that person. That’s especially worse if the person that requested the meeting is late. Know the time it takes you to arrive to a meeting, and leave 5 minutes early. You usually know some time in advance when a meeting will happen, so take care of your business and be on time.

2. Postponing paying the bills

This is a personal problem of mine, as I work from home and when I go out, the places where I need to pay my bills are usually out of my way. Further more, I forget to set money aside for them, so when the final term for payment is reached I usually spend a few days low on cash, as I pay them all in one go. Take your bills and set the money aside for them, and even if it’s out of your way, make a detour when you go shopping and pay them on time. You avoid the interest penalties this way.

3. Talking too much on the phone

Socializing is ok, but spending too much time on the phone doing it might not be, depending on your take on it. Set aside some time in the weekend to get together with your friends or relatives and spend some quality time together. Doing it over the phone is way too impersonal and it costs money to top it off.

4. Eating fast food at lunch

I don’t need to tell you that it’s not healthy, so why do it? Save money and your health, and pack a couple of sandwiches from home. Make them healthy and nutritious and eat those at lunch instead.

5. Getting out of bed late

Hitting the snooze when the alarm goes off or staying too much time in bed means spending the time preparing for work in a constant rush. Set yourself enough time to sleep as much as you need and get up once the alarm goes off. I know it can be hard, but there a few tricks you can use, like buying an alarm clock that is a nightmare to stop or keeping the clock at enough distance from the bed so you have to get up to stop it.

6. Taking work home with you

Organize your time better and avoid spending the time you got with your family on paperwork. It’s a really bad habit and one I’d recommend working on. Don’t slack off at work if you know you’ll have to do it at home instead. When you’re at work, do your job. When you’re home, spend time with your family and make the most of it. Your kids will leave for college soon enough so spend your time now with them and create some nice memories.

7. If you promise something, keep your word

If someone asks you to do something for them, analyze what they’re asking, see if you can do it, and learn to say no when you need to. Promising something and then not following through is not nice at all. When I depend on someone to do something for me, I expect that he does it if he promised so. When you promise something, set some time aside on your to-do list and do it as soon as you can. They’ll appreciate you more for keeping your word when so many don’t.

8. Procrastinating

Too many people have problems with this one, including myself. Procrastination deserves a post of its own, but for now there are a few things you can do about it. Sticking to your to-do list and learning to balance it and do what you write on it is a good first step.

9. Not having enough fun

One thing that bothers me about my fun activities, is that I do them only in the weekends. One big problem when you work at home is learning to be guilt free if you’re not working constantly. I usually feel guilty whenever I’m not on the computer working, feeling that I can do more. Doing something fun every day, even if it’s only for half an hour is something I want to do from now on.

10. Not paying attention and forgetting someone’s name

This one can also be a bit embarrassing and offending to the person you’re being introduced. Try to pay attention for a couple of seconds when you meet someone new and at least remember their name. If you forget it anyway, ask for a business card at the end of the meeting to avoid asking for their name again.

These are 10 of the bad habits I’ve seen in myself or some of my friends. What are your bad habits and how are you trying to change them?

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Want to get more done in less time?  Time is the one constant in all our goals that  raises problems. We waste it daily on different tasks that should be done in much less time. I’ve just read a book called “175 Ways to Get More Done in Less Time”. While many of those tips are just to fill the space and don’t do that much, I checked those that I think are truly valuable and I’ve made my own version of that list. The result is a list of 60 ways to improve your productivity.

Getting Started On The Right Foot

1. Know how you spend your time

Much of our daily time goes on unimportant tasks that don’t help us in any way to get the work done. Observe how you spend your day and which are the areas that you can improve.

2. Focus on starting tasks rather then finishing them

Rather then thinking in the terms of doing something, focus on trying to start it first. That’s usually the hardest part, starting to work on something. Once you get it going you’ll find that it’s easier to actually finish it.

3. Expect the unexpected

Unexpected events will take place every single day and they will eat some of your time. Don’t plan all your day in advance. Instead, leave 20% of your work time unscheduled. If there are only minimal interruptions then use that extra time to work on tasks that are more enjoyable or get a head start on the next day with something more important.

4. Write it down

Relying solely on your memory isn’t the best way to remember to get things done. We forget things all the time, so it’s best to write down your to-do lists and the problems that you need to fix.

5. But don’t write it on pieces of paper

When you write down something that needs to be done don’t do it on pieces of paper that can be lost. Use a spiral-bound notebook or an agenda and a pen. Take them with you wherever you go and write everything down in it, from to-do lists to phone numbers.

6. Learn to speed read

Being able to read documents and books faster will definitely bring you extra time. Plus, it’s something that it’s useful your entire life. Take a course on speed reading or look for ways on how to do it online. I think this will be my next article.

7. Less clutter, better productivity

Ask yourself this question “What’s the worst that can happen if I throw this away?”. If you can live with the answer then throw it away. We cling to lots of things from our past that don’t make sense on keeping. Unless it’s got sentimental value, it’s not worth keeping.

8. Date stamp what you can’t decide to throw away

If you can’t decide to throw something away because you might need it again, put a sticky note on it with the current date and store it in a special drawer for all this stuff. If in 90 days you didn’t need it, get rid of it.

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With a bit of a delay, for which I apologize, here are the entries for the Group Writing Project organized by the Middle Zone Musings blog. My post was What I’ve Learned From Working on a Start-Up.

What I Learned from.

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As I mentioned in my previous article, learning to think outside the box is the main thing I got from working on a start-up. Now, you don’t have to do it like me and go through a grueling but fun ride that takes 9 months long before you see the results, but I strongly encourage you to exercise thinking like that.

For example, let’s say you want to work on a start-up and you want that one great idea that will make you rich. For starters, you can take a look at the tasks you don’t enjoy doing every day and how they could be done faster. Or, take a look at the things you would like doing but you just don’t have the time/ don’t enjoy doing/ don’t know how to do.

I’ll give an example here. I personally would love to organize a competition on one of my blogs, but the problem that I have is all the hassle of buying the prizes, wrapping them, sending them out to another country. For me, this is not a pleasant thing, so I’ve postponed it a lot of times.

How you can make a start-up out of this? Easy. You make a site geared towards bloggers and webmasters, that takes care of all the hassle of buying the prizes and sending them to the lucky winners. The blogger picks the prize, pays for it including shipping, and the start-up takes care of the rest. All the blogger needs to do is log back in when the competition is over and put the name and address of the winner so he can get his prize. You can expand on this a lot, like creating widgets for the competition to be used on blogs or inside posts. For example, why not create a plugin for Wordpress or give the blogger a code to insert in a post, and through that you allow those that take part in the contest to register, while monitoring that they don’t register multiple times. Then use some code to randomly pick a winner out of those registered or allow the blogger to pick one or to nominate 1st, 2nd and 3rd place. This website could also list all the competitions in progress through them, and give those that want a freebie a chance to become a subscriber of the blog/ forum/ whatever by seeing in one place all the competitions.

Of course, for a service like that you would need to have access to relatively low prices for a wider range of products from which the bloggers can pick from, but it’s doable. If there is a service like that they obviously don’t market to bloggers, because I haven’t seen anyone use it.

This is just an example of reaching an idea for a start-up by taking something you don’t enjoy doing and seeing how you could make it easier or better for others.

Open a text file, start brainstorming and write down every task you don’t enjoy doing or that you depend on and see how you can get a start-up out of it. Try to mix what a service like Feedburner offers with features from Digg, MySpace or any other online or offline service. You never know what great idea you might get.

Is there a big enough market for the idea I’ve written above (probably, since there are millions of blogs and who knows how many websites)? Can it make you a good profit? I don’t know, because I haven’t given it too much thought. It can’t be done from my country because I don’t have access to cheap enough items (a MAC in my country costs 50% more then in the US because of taxes) and the shipping costs to a mostly american blogosfere would be higher.

The thing is, ideas are worth less then the paper they’re written on. It’s what you do with them that matters. If I get a couple of Red Bulls and I spend couple of hours I can write down at least 2-3 ideas that would seem destined to be successful at first glance, picked from 10 or 20 others. As long as I don’t implement them (because I already work on another project), they’re not worth anything. There is no such thing as a million dollar idea. There are only million dollar start-ups. So get a friend that knows design or programming, or hire somebody (Digg was started with less then $2000 I think and he hired a programmer to code it), and get started in your free time and work on it. You don’t need funding for that. Just make sure you have money to pay your hosting.

If you fail, it means you at least tried. Learn from it and try again.

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You’re probably aware by this point in your life that you’re probably not doing everything you could be doing with your day. You probably had the lazy days, and the days where you didn’t do everything you’d initially set up to do. Below you can find some tips to a better time management, letting you save precious hours that can be used to reach the smaller goals that you have lined up in your to-do list.

1. Don’t do every single item on this list. It can drive you insane living like this. Chaos is a part of our lives and it’s ok to have some of it. Do a couple of them, and save yourself that one extra hour every day that you need to do everything you set up to do. Or do most of them for a week if you’re on a really tight schedule. This is not meant to turn you into a robot, just to help you reach your goals. It’s about personal improvement, not turning into the perfect workaholic.
2. Make stocks of items you regularly use. Make a list of all items that you usually run out  of and before you go shopping check if you got enough of each to last you for a while. Printing paper, pens, notepads, envelopes, stamps, coffee, any item that makes you leave the house if you don’t have it, because you need it right then. If you have to spend half an hour of your day to go buy printing paper then that is time wasted. Plan your shopping ahead.
3. Go shopping only once a week. Again, plan ahead and buy all your groceries in the weekend for the next week. No point going every two days to buy milk and waste all that time if you can buy it all in one go.
4. A straight line is the fastest way to go. If you do need to buy something fresh every day, then try to find it on your regular route, while returning home from work. No point in doing a detour and wasting 20 minutes every day if you can find that item in a store along your regular route. The power of habit can be quite strong, but there is no rule that says you need to make all your shopping in a single place, if going somewhere else can save you time.
5. Build yourself a daily routine and stick to it. A daily routine you probably have already, but try to build one that’s more efficient. Instead of jumping on the computer after you wake up to read your emails, do other tasks, like taking a shower, eating, getting dressed, and if time allows check the emails at the end. Essential tasks first, fun ones at the end.
6. Make a to-do list and prioritize. Do the harder, more boring or more important tasks first. The fun ones are the easiest to do, but the boring ones you need to do anyway, so why delay them if they’re more important. If they need to be done, then do them first, in the morning when you have more energy. As the day passes, unexpected events might use up the time you were hoping to use for the important parts of your list.
7. Never assume that you’ll have time to do it later. Time is one thing that you can never be sure that you’ll have it when you need it most. Something can always come up and eat all your afternoon or a good chunk of it. Again, important stuff first, fun later. If you have time to do it in the morning, do it then.
8. Save time in the morning by doing things the night before. Prepare your clothes, pack your lunch, write the to-do list for the next day, write the letter that you want to send out in the morning. Anything that you do in the morning and can be done the night before, do it. Make it part of your routine before bed time.
9. Sleep well. Sleep is an important part of time management. It may seem to you that you’re  saving time if you get up 2 hours earlier, but what you make in time you loose in productivity if you’re not sleeping enough to recharge. A good sleep can keep you going all day long. If you’re tired, a task that takes 20 minutes might take you an hour or more. If you do need to wake up earlier then normal, then go to sleep early as well.
10. Leave the drinking for the weekend. Being hangover isn’t the best way to start a day. It kills your productivity and any mood to work. Go out with your friends, but don’t over do it.
11. Always carry with you something to do while waiting. If you’re going to a coffee shop to meet with a friend, and he/she’s not there yet, then take out a pen and a piece of paper, and do your to-do list for the next day. Or some documents that you need to read. There is plenty of dead time in our life, where we just wait and do nothing. Use it! You’d be surprised how many things you can accomplish like that.
12. Do something light on your TV time. If you’re watching the news or a show on TV, that time can also be used for other things. You can pay your bills, write a letter, do some ironing, make your shopping list and so on. No point on just sitting on the couch.
13. Keep the stuff you need in a regular place. Put all your bills, CD’s, office supplies, receipts, manuals, in a place of their own. If you need to look all over the house for the manual of the VCR, then you’re wasting time. I keep a drawer for any paper I need to hold on to.
14. Organize everything. It’s much easier to find something if you organize everything. Your gas bills can have their own folder, and the same goes for phone bills, or any other papers that fall in the same category. Write on the folder what’s in it, or pick different colors for them to make it easier to find the one you need.
15. Cook for more then one meal. When you cook, make larger quantities, enough to last you for a day or two. Heat it up when you’re hungry and you’re done. Cooking can be very time consuming if you want to eat something new at every meal.
16. Don’t just let your computer to stay idle. If you’re away from the computer, why not give him something to do? Start a virus scan, a disk defragmenter, a download that would make your browsing slower if done while you use the computer, burn a DVD, anything that can be done while you’re away.
17. Clean your house, but don’t be compulsive about it. A clean house is important, but being obsessed with it eats up a lot of time. Yes, that collection of CD’s doesn’t need to be ordered alphabetically right now, it can wait until you finish a more important task.
18. Plan your work, but also your breaks. Split your work time in chunks of half an hour or more, or by tasks completed. When you finish an item on your to-do list, use 10 minutes to relax a bit if you feel the need. Don’t over do the breaks, but don’t burn out either.
19. Make your own coffee. You can save both money and time by making your own coffee at home. You can look for recipes on the Internet if you’re looking for the exact taste you get at Starbucks.
20. Don’t plan all your available time. Leave 20-25% of your time free, to compensate for emergencies and interruptions.
21. Compete with yourself. If a certain task usually takes you 30 minutes to complete, try to do it in 25. If you make it, give yourself a reward, something that will make you try harder.
22. Don’t eat too much at lunch. A big lunch makes you sleepy. Eat light and it will be easier to work during the afternoon.
23. Group together similar tasks if they’re small, split them in chunks if they’re big. Switching tasks can be time consuming. For example, booting up the computer, opening the browser, email client, connecting to the Internet. Any activity you need to do daily can be done in one chunk, so you don’t have to start the computer several times a day. This applies to other tasks as well, not just to the computer. If its a big task, then you can split it in smaller pieces over a few days to make it easier to do.
24. Take a break. Find something you enjoy doing, that let’s you blow some steam. All work and no play affects productivity.
25. Avoid unnecessary meetings. You can ask a friend if he can do you a favor over the phone instead of spending one hour meeting with him at a coffee shop.
26. Find out which time of the day works best for you. Each of us usually has a certain period of the day when we do the most work done. Find out when you do the most work and you can schedule the most important tasks in that time period.
27. Avoid noise. Noise is a distraction for most of us. Make sure you block the background noise that might affect you and you’ll find that you can concentrate better.

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