By Are You Wasting Time on Meaningless Things? Watch for These 10 Habits
There are 24 hours in a day and 168 hours in a week. However, it seems that there is never enough time to do all the things you need to accomplish. Do you waste time and energy on nonsense?
Perhaps, some of the biggest reasons you’re always running into a stressed-out mess is because you don’t know how to manage your time efficiently. What if you could prioritize your life and eliminate some of the things that take too much time?
You should know that some things are worth all the time and effort you can give them, like your family. You can never go wrong if you take time to care for your children or your spouse. However, time-wasters have a hard time balancing even family time because their minds and schedules take them in 100 different directions.
Ten bad habits that show you are wasting your time
Before you can correct your forms, you must identify the bad habits that you have developed over time. By making some adjustments to your methods, you can correct the problem. Who doesn’t want to feel less stressed? Here are some ways to tell if you are having trouble wasting time.
1. You spend too much time on social media
The biggest waste of time of all is social media. According to Statista, there are expected to be more than 3.4 billion users of this type of media by 2023. With platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, YouTube, Snapchat and many others, it is easy to see how a large amount can spend of time scrolling through these sites.
Did you know that many people rely on sites like the Facebook newsfeed for their current world news and events? Who reads the newspaper because you can get all the information you need when you want it? This is where the real aspects of wasting time come into play.
According to Social media today, the average person spends about 116 minutes, or two hours, online each day. It doesn’t seem like much. However, if it breaks down over a lifetime, it equates to five years on social media. Wow, do you really want to spend five years of your life being “informed”?
2. You constantly send text messages
How many text messages do you receive in a day? While some are important and necessary for your work or family life, how many of these messages are just useless chatter? According to Simple text messagesAmericans send more than 26 billion text messages every day.
When broken down into people, it’s an average of 15 a day for people 55 and older. More than 70 percent of cell phone users find that texting is the number one reason they have a phone. Phone calls have dropped dramatically because texting is king.
Your age plays a big factor in all of this, as the average 18-24 year old will send more than 100 text messages every day. How many of your messages are useless and are you wasting your time?
3. Strive to be a perfectionist
Perfectionism it is another great waste of time in life. People who want everything to be perfect often start and redo a task many times to get it right. Have you ever sat down to work on a paper and ripped it up or started over from the beginning?
You must realize that life will never be perfect. You are human and you are subject to mistakes. If your need to be perfect inhibits your life, you may have an anxiety-based condition called obsessive-compulsive disorder. According to the National Institute of HealthOCD is characterized by compulsive thoughts or behaviors in nature.
The need to be perfect in everything you do can lead you to spend more time than necessary on projects. Thankfully, anxiety-based disorders they are easy to treat, so you can get advice to improve this time-wasting problem.
4. Videogames
It would be helpful if you had some downtime, and it’s okay to play video games. However, did you know that the average adult spends up to six hours a day playing video games? According to a study referred to Tech Crunch, video games aren’t just for kids.
Set some healthy time limits on how much you can play each day. If you need to set the alarm or a timer on your system, then it can be a way to help you combat your time-wasting issues.
5. Watch TV
With the introduction of services from so many different streaming companies, it’s easy to find tons of things to watch. Gone are the days when you had to surf the canals and hope to see something worth seeing.
Watching television can become a major addiction if you allow it. Plus, since you can watch TV on a tablet, cell phone, computer, and other devices, it’s even easier than sitting in your living room to watch your favorite shows.
If you’re wasting your time on television, you may need to re-evaluate your broadcast.
6. Unnecessary meetings
Have you ever felt like your employer is having meetings to have meetings? It’s okay to have a group session to catch up on things, but there comes a time when it’s redundant. You can keep people informed through social media, email, and text messaging.
Using these methods allows them to see information when they have time and not when they are in the middle of something important. Also, taking employees out of work to have a meeting is counterproductive, unless it is a serious problem.
7. Procrastination
Why put off tomorrow the things you could accomplish today? A big problem that can cause wasting time is procrastination. While it seems like it can give you a few more hours in your day, it all falls apart when multiple projects expire at once.
When you put off the most challenging tasks to another day, you are creating trouble down the road. Better to tackle the trickier things first to make your tomorrow crazier than today.
8. Check your emails too often
As if not on social media and texting all day, many add to the list checking their emails too often. Your email won’t go anywhere. You don’t need to check them every five minutes.
Did you know that the average person checks their email inbox 6-20 times a day according to a survey conducted by Michael the Maven? It’s best to limit that to 3-5 times a day, or even less if you can.
Always check your email first thing in the morning so you can clean your inbox. Then you have to check it out at lunchtime and finally it should be the last thing you check before you go home that day. Most likely, nothing momentous happened during those in-between moments you need to see.
9. Doomsday Scroll
Do you have your cell phone set to alert you to current news and events? Do you feel obliged to check what is happening in the world always? End of the world displacement (or end of the world displacement) is a new term coined due to all the events in the world.
Working-class people are not as likely to watch the news or read the newspaper as other generations, but they feel a compulsion to find out what is going on. Continuous checking of news reports will only make you nervous, especially since there is almost nothing good in the news these days. Not only are you wasting your time, but you are also increasing your anxiety every time you move.
10. Smoking or snacks
An eight-hour day at the office allows for a lunch break and probably two fifteen-minute breaks. However, many people want to go to the bathroom multiple times, eat snacks, and take smoking breaks. Add up how many times you leave your workplace for a smoke or a snack, and the time you lose can be shocking.
Unless you have health problems or are sick that day, you don’t need more than those three breaks each day. You may need to change the intensity of the work you do to maintain your stamina, such as challenging tasks in the morning. However, there is no reason to keep getting up and taking short breaks between your breaks.
Final thoughts on wasting time
Everyone has some things in their day that make them guilty of wasting time, but what worries is excess. What can you do to make your day and life more productive? Do you see a habit that needs to be changed to make it more efficient?
Taking inventory and tracking your habits it can be revealing. When you control your wasteful practices, you will have more hours to accomplish important things.
