by Mary Cantando, Founder of The Woman’s Advantage, Guest Contributor

The best way to kill a day is to engage in time-wasting bad habits. They eat up an hour here, an hour there, and before long your day is gone.

Here are five ways to gain two hours each day by eliminating bad habits.

Five Ways to Gain Two Hours Each Day

1. Stop surfing the web.

Studies show that it takes 15 minutes to get into the groove on a task and when you jump from that task to surf the web it takes 15 minutes to get back into that groove.

2. Don’t immediately respond to e-mails. 

Check your email on a set schedule rather than continuously.

3. Tackle and eliminate ugly tasks first thing. 

You can waste up to two hours by continually postponing a difficult task. Just tackle that ugly thing first thing in the day and get it over with.

4. Stop trying to be perfect! 

Perfect is the enemy of done and you can spend needless hours trying to get there.

5. Cut back on meeting time. 

What would happen if you cut the time for your weekly staff meeting in half?