How much time did you waste today?

It seems to be getting easier and easier to waste time.

The other day I got a blog from one of the most popular blogger's on the web. Her subject was useless things you end up getting on the web and then she gave examples. Yes, every one of the things she wrote about was useless and every one of the things I took the time to read was useless. Yet, I took the time to read them even though she said upfront that everything she was writing about was useless.

However, I have learned a few things from reading that blog:

1. If someone tells me something they are writing is useless, I'll believe them and won't take the time to read it.
2. Don't write useless things and, if you do write them anyway, tell people upfront they are useless.
3. The web and technology have created a feeling that everything is urgent and needs to be read or responded to.
4. Most of the things we get are not urgent and do not need to be responded to. (It is polite to respond to personal emails though.)

An old time management lesson broke things down as to where we spend our time in one of these four buckets:

1. Urgent and important. (You need to act on these items and most people usually do.)
2. Urgent, but not important. (These are usually other people's priorities that we let become our own.)
3. Not urgent and not important. (The place where most of us waste most of our time.)
4. Important but not urgent. (These are the things we need to do and act on, but most of us get sidetracked into doing the urgent but not importants.)