Do Something. New. Today

If ever anything could break me of the habit of getting wrapped up in useless obsessive minutia, this is it. 

You know what I mean by useless and obsessive, right?  Like wanting to fire off an angry letter at the idiot retailer and then spending the next two hours telling him how better to conduct business instead of concentating on my own business. 

Or politely listening to someone blather on endlessly in a meeting about his special interest when it should be taken care of in a side meeting with one other person–who isn’t me. 

Or how about simply spending time worrying about something I can’t control? 

Here’s the tool I’m using to break me of that nasty habit:  The Meeting Miser at Payscale Tools —  http://www.payscale.com/meeting-miser?tk=mm_hmpg02 

The idea is that you input the names and salaries of the people attending your meeting and keep the calculator running next to the briefing charts everyone’s staring at for the duration of the meeting.  (Where was this when I needed it last week for the 7.5 hour meeting I was stuck in?!)  You get an idea of how many dollars are being wasted when the meeting gets off course–or maybe the meeting isn’t needed at all. 

My personal use for it, though, is to keep it on my computer screen and whenever I start to obsess about something out of my control or I get that phone call from someone who’s bored and wants me to spend precious time entertaining them, I can start the clock and see how much of my time is worth that I’m wasting.  For me, quantifying my worth makes decisions on where to spend my time so much easier.

I guarantee you’ll dig yourself out of the worst of behaviors much more quickly when you assign a value to your time.