Our old friend procrastination is quite clearly the enemy of efficient time management as these definitions show:

Procrastination: the act of procrastinating; putting off or delaying or defering an action to a later time. dilatoriness: slowness as a consequence of not getting around to it.

Procrastinate: postpone doing what one should be doing.

Procrastinator: someone who postpones work (especially out of laziness or habitual carelessness).

We can add to this the often-quoted saying in talks or articles about time management that procrastination is the thief of time. While this does stand true, procrastination has become the whipping boy of time mismanagement, for it is not solely responsible for stealing those precious minutes from our working days; rather it is only one of a merry band of thieves. Here are some other 'bandits' that may hold you up and steal your valuable time, as well as some ways of minimising their impact.

Disorganisation
This can gobble up the minutes like Pac Man eats dots. If you file documents and emails haphazardly with no system for easy retrieval, then you are going to waste time looking for them. You should always know exactly where to look for a specific document or email.

Dead Time
Make a habit of identifying those times when you are being unproductive, for example, while waiting for someone to answer the phone, or while you are downloading a file. As small as these pockets of time are, try to utilise them. Rather than just waiting for that call to be answered with the phone in your left hand, you could operate the mouse with your right to open Outlook and set up a new email that will be ready to type as soon as you come off the phone.

Yes To All
As much as we might like to, we cannot be all things to all men; sometimes we simply have to say no. Agreeing to everything your colleagues ask of you will not only eat into your valuable time, but word would pretty soon get around that you are a soft touch and the requests will become more frequent.

If you find it difficult to say no, picture this scenario. Your colleague gets praise for the diligence he showed in delegating tasks to others, including you. Then you are questioned as to why your own project is running behind schedule.

Demoralization
There are fewer things that will bring on a bout of procrastination than distaste for the job in hand. When refilling the stapler takes priority over an urgent task, then you know that something is wrong. There can be several reasons for this reluctance to tackle an important job...but two of the most common are taking on too much at once and not having the self-confidence to perform the task to a suitably high standard.

A good manager will lend a sympathetic ear to problems such as this, which are more common than you may think, so don't be afraid to seek help and advice. You can maybe break down your workload into more manageable sized tasks or perhaps arrange an incentive where a more palatable task awaits after the completion of the daunting one.

Multitasking
You may be wondering what this is doing on the list. How can doing more than one job at once possibly waste time? The answer is, quite easily, actually.

Multitasking is only worthwhile if it enables you to complete the tasks more quickly than had you done them singly. In the example I gave above of preparing an email while waiting for someone to answer the phone, the multitasker can concentrate fully on setting up the email, as there is no communication with the person on the other end of the phone.

As soon as the person at the other end picks up, however, the whole scenario changes and the multitasker must try to concentrate on two different things: his phone conversation and setting up the email. This is where multitasking can become unproductive, as he could miss an important detail in the phone conversation because of the distraction caused by setting up the email. This would require him to call back and ask for the information again; something that would not do his reputation any good.

There are many more ways that 'bandits' can rob you of your valuable time, but identifying them is the first step towards improving your efficiency through better time management. Learn how to root them out and your productivity will only increase.