Time is a commodity that is more wasted than the earth. Most people do not understand this, but since you are here, it means you already ahead of the pack. In lieu of not wasting time, how can you stop wasting your time?
You can stop wasting your time by defining what you want to do, which actions will take you there, and allocating the time it will take to get you there the quickest.
This is the overly simple form of helping you to stop wasting time. However, if you are interested in more details, I have some of those too.
Why Am I Wasting My Time?
The biggest reason people waste time is because they drain their willpower with depression or anxiety, which leads to them only wanting to do short term goals that contrast their long term goals.
Of course, there are a number of time wasters.
The first could be pour time management. Some people do not allocate their time to a task properly. As a consequence, they waste that time they could have spent on a certain task doing unproductive stuff.
The solution to this one is simple and obvious. They need to decide what they have to do, then break it down into parts, and finally allocate time to each specific task.
However, most people already know what they have to do. The majority of people are aware of their goals, such as studying, reading, writing that book etc.
These people waste time because they drain their willpower through things like depression, and anxiety.
Maybe they decide to do a complicated task, instead of something simpler. They will spend the time between that moment and the working time, stressing about the task that they have to do. This will lead to their willpower levels depleting. When the moment to work finally arrives, they collapse into themselves, and find some distraction. Some short term goal.
Studies show that there is often a short term goal contrasts long term goals and people choose the short term goal. For example, you may want to prepare for the test (long term goal) but you also want to feel comfortable (continue laying in bed). So, you choose the first.
Upon choosing enough short term goals, depression hits. This is because you fail so often, you start to look down at yourself.
That step makes the failure somewhat permanent, unfortunately.
What Are The Biggest Time Wasters?
The biggest time wasters are socializing, social media, browsing the internet, entertainment and procrastination.
Multiple studies have been done on this topic. Most of them have been done in work spaces, but I think we can take some of the information back home, and see how it translates.
There was a study done at “Business And Innovations In Business Activities XIIL” on what time wasting activities graduates in their first years of employment did. They found that there were mainly 7:
- Interruption by telephone calls
- Drop in Visitors
- Meeting
- Crisis
- Don’t fix terms, priorities, targets
- Poor communication
- And finally, indecision and procrastination
These are the biggest time wasters that they found in the company. When I looked at other studies done, such as incaafrica’s study on time wasting, I found similar results. So, I summarized these results into a list that is applicable to people working from home, whether it is studying students or whatever. This is the list I compiled
- Socializing
- Social Media
- Browsing The Internet
- Entertainment
- Procrastination
How Can I Stop Myself From Wasting My Time?
1. Decide What To Do
The first step to stop wasting time is to try and find out what it is that you need to do for you to be productive.
As previously mentioned, the first reason people waste time is because they fail at time management.
In simple terms, time management is allocating the proper amount of time to the appropriate task so that you have enough time to complete the task to a satisfactory degree.
However, in more complicated terms, it gets a bit… wordier.
You see, that simple terms statement is composed of 2 main parts. First, it is the proper amount of time, then it is the appropriate task. You need to calculate a means of determining the proper amount of these 2.
Appropriate task
First, we deal with appropriate task. The first thing you need to do here is define what exactly the task you have to do is. Most people already know. They have to study, to read, or they have to write a blog post they have been avoiding for a long time because it is so cold today. Different strokes.
Anyway, for those people, they have already finished step one. However, for other people, they feel like they are wasting their lives, and yet they do not know what they are doing. They feel like they are wasting their time and they are not sure why they feel like that. For those people, here is a simple technique you can use to arrange your life, and find out what you need to do to become what you want in the future.
After that, you take this task, and you split it into pieces. You can dissect it into as many pieces as you want.
Proper amount of time
Finally, you have to determine the proper amount of time. This one is simple. Decide the following day that you will start working, and select a time when you can start working on the task. On that day, work on the task for as long as you can. When you stop working, look at how long it took you.
That’s your max level time work.
From then on, I want you to look at the weeks ahead of you. Select time that you can do the work in, and fit your max level time work.
Application Example
Let’s say the appropriate task that you have settled on is that you want to start writing more. So, write for as long as you can, and let’s say that’s 4 hours. Take that 3 hours, and split it across the week. Say you will write from 5 in the morning to 8 every weekday.
2. Assess Your Life
The second step to not wasting more time is to try and assess your life, and make out which tasks are productive and which tasks are a complete waste of your time.
A majority of the time you will find that time wasters feel like the do nothing most of the day, which makes them depressed, and disappointed in themselves.
However, upon closer inspection, you will find that the people actually do a lot during their day.
From eating, watching lots of TV, reading books, to even more abstract things like day dreaming, and talking to themselves, there is a lot of things that people do. Some are more obviously pointless, like the ones I just name.
However, other pointless habits are not as obvious at first glance.
An example of this is something like doing laundry, or going grocery shopping. I am not advocating that you go around with dirty clothes… if you can’t get away with it. KIDDING! I’m kidding…. or am I-
I am instead trying to say the process of washing your clothes leaves you open to a lot of distractions. You could find yourself deciding to watch a YouTube video while the clothes are spinning. Then, you will find the laundry is done, and you are still just watching YouTube.
Would it not be cheaper to just pay someone to go get your groceries, or to do your laundry? It’s just something to consider. There are apps for everything nowadays.
So, how do you assess your life to see how productive the actions you take are?
The four spheres process
For simple terms, I’d just say go to the self therapy article that I wrote. But if you want a summary, then the points were this. Your life is composed out of 4 spheres; financial, social, physical, and intellectual sphere. Assess each of these sphere with pointed questions, and you can get specific analysis of the actions in your daily life, and which are productive.
- Financial sphere: Where does your money come from? Is there prospects of making many in the future (school, college).
- Social sphere: Who do you go to when lonely? Who do you have fun with? Who goes to you to have fun? Who goes to you when they are lonely? Is there a way of increasing the fun? This can either be increasing the bonds you have with the ones there, or getting more people. Depends on your taste, and extroversion
- Physical sphere: How well does your body serve you in your social and financial spheres? Meaning do you have physical energy for interaction? Do you have energy to concentrate for more than 8 seconds? Can your brain remain attentive?
- Intellectual sphere: This refers to the knowledge acquisition methods, and your knowledge usage methods. Do you know where to get your information? Where to go to get knowledge about your financial life? Where to go to get information on how to socialize? Where to go to get information on how to your brain power and energy/will power? And when you get information, do you have a system that allows you to implement information?
3. Decide What Needs To Be Improved
The third step to not wasting time, is making the decision on what you need to work on, and cutting down the things that you do not want to work on anymore.
After doing the 4 spheres process, you will have a pretty good idea of what actions to take to improve your life (e.g. read texts books instead of YouTube videos for knowledge acquisition, do verbal fluency exercises for socializing, call her for an ice cream date this afternoon, do calisthenics to improve your physical energy, and create then market a product online for finances). You will also have an idea of what actions are not exactly productive actions (doing the bed, watering the plant, watching the series).
Now, you need to decide on what actions to take.
As much as you can have a long list of things that you can do which are productive, the unfortunate news say that your days are limited, and your energy is also limited.
You need to choose the specific things that will give the most results, and also do certain tasks that are not productive, but help you rest, and improve your mental state.
You can use the four spheres to decide these too.
If your money source is currently flowing, then there is no need to focus on it. Also, if the people you speak to are enough, and you have a special someone, then that is also fine. If you can focus on your work and not get sleepy, and you can engage your friends in interaction, then that is also fine. Finally, if you have a strategy of improving your financial, your social, and physical health, then you do not need to worry about knowledge.
If you have a problem with one of these, then focus on the productive activities that affect it.
4. Start Doing What You have Decided To Do
The fourth thing that you could do is doing the things that you decided to do.
For most people, this step comes naturally after the last couple of steps. Now they have a clear vision for their life, and when they go things, they actually have a positive impact in their own lives.
You will soon notice that your life feels very fulfilled. Your time does not feel wasted anymore.
So, you can then get to work. However, if you need a step by step process to actually begin working, then I have you.
5. You Need To Set A Plan For How To Do The Things You Have Decided To Do
In order to stop wasting, you could start planning out how you will execute the plans for things that you want to do.
Choose a main goal that you want to achieve in the next 6 months in the specific sphere you feel needs to be improved. Then, you can break it down into monthly steps. Eventually, you can make them weekly, before finally making them daily plans.
E.g. You decide you want to do handstand push ups in 6 months. Then, you can decide that for 1 month you could learn handstand against the wall. The next month you will learn handstand balancing. Then you can learn negative handstand push ups. Then you break it down to weekly goals. You could say this week you will stay up for 10 seconds. Then 15. Then 20. etc.
6. You Need To learn Productivity Technique
For you to stop wasting time, you will need to learn productivity techniques, and tricks.
Luckily for you, that’s what this entire blog is about.
The simple run down I can give for now is that you need to start waking up early, and going for a run. This clears your mind for the work ahead. Then, you will need to set daily goals, and start a daily log. Write down why you did not achieve the goals you set, and if you did, how you could achieve them better.
For more detailed tips go to other articles.
7. Enjoy Your Life As It Is
The next step to stop wasting time is to start rewarding yourself while you are being productive so it can become more incentivizing.
As I wrote in my other article, people love punishing themselves for not working hard enough, and that is horrible. This is unfortunately an unnecessary revenge strategy.
Instead, it would help to reward yourself when you are being good.
Do the work at the same time with something else you love. Eat as you work, or listen to music, or asmr. This is a far superior strategy, I swear.
8. Forgive Yourself For Not Keeping Up With Your Task
The final step to stop yourself wasting time is to forgive yourself for all those times you were not being good or productive.
It all seems rather simple, but for others it isn’t. Most people want to continue suffering for all the time they’ve wasted, not understanding that the punishing of themselves is just more time wasting.
Do not do that.
Instead, reward yourself for all the good and productive things that you have done in your life thus far. It is probably the best course of action in my humble opinion.
The day we finally figure out how to stop wasting time, and focus on making ourselves titans of the businesses we are in is the day we finally finish mastering mastery.