35 Things You Do that Wastes Your Time

Why You Should Stop Wasting Time

If you want to get things done, if you are driven and motivated with big dreams and plans, if you are not looking to just cruise through life but instead, chart your course, move with intention and go places, then you have to watch where your time goes. Wasting time is not an option for you.

A little confession: I can only write this post because I have wasted countless hours that I will never get back. But if I didn’t, I couldn’t write this post. The silver lining in all things.

You get 86,400 seconds every day. And guess what? You are ultimately in charge of what you do with those seconds. Whether you use them well or waste them, there are consequences. Nobody knows the battle that you are fighting, or the road that you are taking, but it is your life and nobody controls your mind, your heart and therefore your actions, other than you. You are not living in prison and no matter what your circumstances, you can change them, as long as you believe so.

Positive believing has to happen first to let you out of your own cage, the cage of fear. If you feel like a victim, you will act and behave as one.

And those 86,400 seconds, they go fast. The older you get, the faster time goes, which is very unfair if you ask me (I realize nobody is asking me but just sayin’) because it’s in our maturity and wisdom that we have important things to do, not in our childhoods where time seemed to go by oh so slowly. Either way, the time passes and you age, whether you like it or not.

“It’s called middle age, little brother, and it comes for us all.” Mycroft, Sherlock’s older brother on Sherlock Holmes, the British TV series.

So before you let your hours and days drift away into a myriad of little things, wake up to the real purpose of your life. You do not get a second chance. This Is It!

Check in with yourself to make absolutely positively 100% certain that those days, hours and minutes are put to your true needs and core desires. Even if you handed the control keys over to someone or something else (fear perhaps?) to tell you what to do and when to do it, you can take back control.

The worst cage of all is the one you put yourself in, and from first hand experience, I say don’t do it. Get back in charge! Don’t make a fuss, just get back in charge of your life. It’s yours and you can decide what goes and what stays.

35 Small Things You Do that Waste a Huge Chunk of Time

Getting back in charge is not a leap. It happens in tiny steps. Here are 35 small things that sneak up on you and steal away your energy and waste a huge chunk of your time before you realize it:

1. Saying a “quick” hi to someone during a run or a walk.
2. Answering a “quick” question at work for a random co-worker.
3. Procrastinating by making excuses. It makes you dread the task you delay and makes you feel guilty.
4. Watching a ‘little’ TV to decompress, and turning it off reluctantly 2 hours later.
5. Going out to a crowded restaurant to eat instead of cooking at home.
6. Consuming alcohol which then debilitates your ability to think clearly. Hence a giant waste of time.
7. Worrying about all the stuff that can go wrong.
8. Telling someone else about all your worries.
9. Complaining about something you can neither change nor control.
10. Reading magazines. 99% of the magazines anyway.
11. Watching commercials, infomercials, advertisements.
12. Popping by YouTube and getting sucked into something totally irrelevant.
13. Watching random videos that scroll across your feed about someone’s child or cat or
14. Checking Facebook or Twitter ‘real quick’.
15. Chasing small money when you are running a small business with a big vision.
16. Asking everyone’s opinion about something you have already decided you are going to do.
17. Watching bad movies on an airplane just to pass the time.
18. Going out to run errands in the middle of rush-hour.
19. Hanging out with people you don’t enjoy just to pretend you have friends.
20. Finishing a book that you hate just because you started it. Let it go. There’s a million books that could touch your soul.
21. Trying to change someone’s mind. Their opinion is none of your business. (Unless it’s your child of 18 years or younger.)
22. Saying yes to everything at work because you don’t know any better.
23. Listening to spam comments, stupid reviewers and crazy people trying to bring you down.
24. Watching depressing movies when you know they give you nightmares and bring down your spirits.
25. Reading trashy books and thus wasting your brain power.
26. Staying in a relationship when it is obviously bad for you. Stop hurting yourself.
27. Chasing potential clients that obviously do not want to work with you.
28. Explaining your unconventional lifestyle to people who don’t care or want to argue with you.
29. Over-indulging in a big meal which zaps all your energy and renders the rest of afternoon or evening useless.
30. Attending parties, social events, and especially baby showers out of obligation, not desire or love.
31. Shopping and going to the mall only to pass the time when you don’t need anything special.
32. Going out on a Friday night just to be cool among friends when you’d rather work on your business or read that book.
33. Being selfless and wondering why you feel so rotten when you put your own desires last.
34. Engaging with anyone who likes to gossip and judge and resent the whole world for their own reasons.
35. Doing favors or spending time with anyone who is not grateful for and respectful to you.

Is it REALLY a Waste of Time?

A little clarification about the list: You may consider any activity above as joyful and exciting. It may be important to you. It may have meaning in your life and with your family and traditions and culture. You may be doing it with purpose and intention and a clear mind rather than the force of an old habit you can’t shake. If that’s how you feel, it is NOT a waste of your time.

A waste of time comes with a loud indicator: Just see how you feel after an activity. Are you energized or drained by it? Are you happy or resentful for it? You know the feeling when you’ve wasted your time. I find all of these a giant waste of my time, but if you don’t, well that’s why we have the comment section, so tell me what you think.

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