Common time wasters
Time is the raw material of life. Time is the most precious thing we have because without time we can have nothing else. The way we manage our time has a profound influence on our lives. Use it effectively and wealth and happiness are possible, squander it and the reverse is likely.
We all need relaxation and recreation but some activities that we habitually engage in are robbing us of important chunks of our lives without us even realizing it. So are you making the most of your time or is it frittered away on:
- TV. If, from the age of 15, we watch 4 hours of TV a day (and many people watch much more) then in a lifetime we will spend almost 11 years in front of the TV. Image what you could achieve in 11 years (write a book, get a degree or two, earn more money, paint pictures, build a boat, or house, or any other dream or ambition that takes your fancy).
- Phones. While aimlessly chatting to friends can waste time, there are far worse phone time thieves. Being kept waiting when trying to get through to government departments or businesses, unsolicited sales or charity calls, or calls from people we don’t want to hear from, are galling time wasters. List your number on the ‘Do not call’ register, get a number display phone and an answering machine and if you are likely to be kept on hold or in a phone queue read, write a letter, write cheques to pay accounts or anything else to productively fill in the time. And remember, there is no law that says you have to answer a phone. If it rings at an inconvenient time—don’t answer it.
- Commuting. Whether you drive or use public transport you can waste hours a day travelling to and from work. Find ways to make the time less stressful and wasteful—read (but not if you are driving) listen to music, audio books, self-development CDs, learn a foreign language, make entries in your journal, or practise relaxation techniques, positive affirmations and visualization.
- Smoking. When I gave up smoking I noticed how much more work I got done in a day. If it takes 5 to 10 minutes to smoke a cigarette and you smoke 20 a day that’s between 1hour 40 minutes and 3 hours 20 minutes a day wasted.
- Procrastination. Often we waste more time coming up with excuses and reasons why we can’t do something than it would take to actually do it. Or, the delay in getting around to doing it has made the effort and time required greater than it would have been earlier—the old stitch in time saves nine rule.
- Pornography. Sorry guys but if it is more than an occasional ogle, porn can become a great time waster (or worse). Porn is fantasy and it can seem safer, more exciting, and more satisfying than relationships and interactions with real people.<!–[if !supportEmptyParas]–> <!–[endif]–>
- Games. Video and computer games and sports of all kinds are great recreation but also seem to be addictive. They often take over lives (of males especially). Games can be a great escape from reality but if overused they can also squander time and time is life.
- The Internet. I love the WWW but it can be a massive time waster. How often do you just want to look something up and three hours later still haven’t got to it because you’ve gone off on numerous tangents? And social networking sites are fun but can be addictive. A list, a time limit, and a lot of self-control are needed.
- Worrying. I hate to think how many precious hours I’ve wasted worrying about things that never happened. Worrying is absolutely useless. If there is something you can do to prevent or solve a problem do it, then leave the rest in the lap of the gods.
- Gossip. Spending time speculating and mulling over other peoples’ lives (especially celebrities or others we don’t even know) only uses up time that would be better spent on improving our own lives.
- Waiting. Sometimes it seems as though we spend half our lives waiting—for other people to do something for us, for someone to ring, arrive, leave, to commit, for other people to change, for something to happen. Being as independent as possible and taking a pro-active approach—doing rather than waiting and hoping—is more likely to produce results.
- Saying ‘yes’ when you want to say ‘no’, and other forms of people pleasing.
- Mess, clutter and disorder. If we are surrounded by mess it’s hard to find things, hard to clean up, and hard to do any activity if ‘stuff’ is in the way. De-clutter, simplify, organize.
- Email overload. Be careful who you give your address to and limit the number of emails you send—the more you send, the more you receive, and the longer you spend ploughing through your inbox.
- Anything that we do more than is necessary, anything we do obsessively, anything that preoccupies us, or has become an addiction and which we do to the detriment of other things. It could be shopping, gambling, collecting, fishing, playing golf, being fixated on some celebrity, or even working. If you steal time from other essential things for this passion perhaps you need to re-examine your priorities.
Next time you are ‘killing’ time, remember you will never get that time back, you can never reuse it. That chunk of your life is gone for good. If you want to know where your time goes keep a ‘Time Journal’ for a week or two and write down everything you do and how long it takes. This will give you a snapshot of your life and how you are spending it. Are you spending it wisely or frittering it away?
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