Time confetti is a term that refers to small, meaningless periods of time that are spent doing things that could be batched (or not done at all).

Checking emails.
Checking notifications.
Responding to messages.
Checking the news.
And so on.

Letting them split up your deep, meaningful work is not the plan. But so many of us do it.

So how do you avoid time confetti?

  • Know what you’re doing before opening your laptop. Never open it blind!
  • Add smaller things to a separate list and only do them all together, when you’ve done what really matters.
  • Then finally (and this is deep), make sure you’re working on something that you really believe in. Because if you don’t, it’s easy to turn anything into an excuse to be distracted.

(I heard the term "time confetti" via Brigid Schulte in her book, Overwhelmed)

How do you avoid making time confetti?