Let’s face it, when you own your own business you can do what you want. After all, who’s going to tell you otherwise. But at the end of the day, if you don’t complete the tasks at hand, not only will you be forced to work longer hours, you may also have some very unhappy customers. So here are five bad work habits that result in wasted time and more.

1. Checking social media. According to a survey by Ipsos, people between the ages of 18 and 64 spend 3.2 hours a day on social media. Unless your business is dependant on your social media activities, chances are those are unproductive hours. Try allocating pre-set periods of time throughout the day to check you social feeds, keeping them to a maximum of ten minutes.
2. Long meetings. Meetings can be a great opportunity to brainstorm and strategize. The problem is that they have a tendency to go longer than planned. Set start and end times – and stick to them. It will not only make the meeting more productive, but will make you look more professional. After all, successful people don’t have time for long meetings.
3. Distracted web surfing. How did a search for industry statistics turn into 20 minutes of watching cat videos? With so much content being delivered to your inbox, social feed, and browser, it’s easy to get distracted. An easy way to avoid getting sidetracked is set your browser to open to a blank page instead of a portal. Also, make a written list of the information you need to find before surfing.
4. Mixing business and pleasure. Meeting a friend for lunch on a weekday is great fun, but not very profitable. Just because you have the opportunity to take off doesn’t mean you should. If your goal is to grow your company and make more money, then focus on how your time can be spent doing that. And save the social activities for after hours.
5. Content creation and consumption. With over 150 million blogs on the internet, plus articles and news sites, it’s easy to find yourself overwhelmed with information. Add to that your own blog or contributions to industry sites, and staying current becomes a full time job. To save time – and your sanity, focus on just a couple sites or LinkedIn groups for information. Any industry trends that are worthy of knowing will find themselves being discussed on at least one of them.

Marc Gordon is a professional speaker and marketing expert. Get more marketing tips on his website, marcgordon.ca and on his online show, marctv.net.