If you’re like me (and you are), you have one or more habits that often lead to problems or wasted time.

Back in the days when I was making a lot of calls, I had a habit of waiting until I finished the calls before scheduling the follow-ups. I liked to get through the calls as quickly as possible, and then do “paperwork”.

With some people, the follow-up was two days. With others, two weeks. It depended on the situation and the conversation.

The problem was, after the calls, even an hour later, I often couldn’t remember enough context to decide the best time to follow-up and had to go through all my notes again to make that decision.

Sometimes, I got busy with other things and the follow-up fell through the cracks. I would up with a bunch of people I needed to contact but no schedule for doing it.

The fix was simple.

I decided I would take a few seconds after each call to record a follow-up date. It might be a specific date or just “3 days” but I wrote something down before I went onto the next call.

Problem solved.

How about you? What do you often do inefficiently? Do you have any bad habits that slow you down or lead to errors?

Do you forget to put things on your calendar? Avoid dealing with certain types of situations (clients, emails, problems) and find them getting worse? Do you misfile things and have trouble finding them later?

These are relatively easy to fix, and worth fixing.

Create a new habit, a checklist, a reminder, or delegate the task to someone who can do it for you.

Figure out what you need to do and do it. You’ll save time and have fewer things to fix later.

Does your marketing need fixing? Here’s what I recommend