Chances are you’ve caught yourself saying, “I need to stop wasting my time!” or “I need to stop living like this!” or whatever phrase strikes a chord.
Getting caught up in pointless habits like binge-watching TV or surfing the internet is a common response to life’s stresses. Most of us are guilty of living this way.
But, sometimes, we find that these habits are causing severe drama in our lives. Maybe we feel anxious, depressed, or frustrated. Or, perhaps we’re overwhelmed with obligations and responsibilities.
Either way, admitting to ourselves that we need to stop wasting time is an excellent first step to stop wasting time.
So what can you do to finally stop wasting time and energy instead of just saying it? Consider these:
- Start setting goals. Without a plan, it’s easy to get swept up in day-to-day activities and forget why you’re working so hard. Goals provide clarity. They’re useful not only for helping you finish tasks but for helping you avoid wasting time in the first place.
- For example, you could set a goal to blog once a week. Your blogging time won’t just feel like a meaningless “waste” of time. It’ll be purposeful. This goal will also help you develop the skill of setting goals and achieving them.
- Multitasking. Multitasking can do more than drive you crazy. It can be bad for you. Research suggests that multitasking is a myth. In reality, it impairs a person’s ability to succeed.
- Multitasking can impede productivity, engagement, and performance. People who multitask are usually more productive when they focus on one thing at a time rather than juggling multiple tasks at once.
- So, before you try to juggle more tasks than you can handle, shut down the multitasking and focus on finishing one item at a time.
- Schedule your day in advance. 5 a.m. rolls around, and you immediately want to crawl back into bed. Instead of getting some sleep, you drag yourself out of bed, make your coffee, and head to work.
- You arrive at the office around 8 a.m., but you spend the first half-hour reading the news or checking social media. By noon, you’re exhausted, but you haven’t checked a single thing off your to-do list. Sound familiar?
- It’s easy to understand why so many of us say we don’t have enough time in our day. Many of us feel overwhelmed between work, family obligations, and social interactions. Compounding this problem is the sense that there isn’t enough time in the day to get everything done.
- But instead of feeling overwhelmed, wake up early, set aside a specific time to schedule your day, put your phone away, and get things done. The earlier you start, the earlier you can accomplish your goals, and the longer you’ll be able to keep yourself sane.
- Keep track of your time. Tracking your time for a day shows you where you spend your time, what tasks you do, and how much time it takes. That helps you identify areas where you can either improve or eliminate time-wasting activities.
- By tracking your time, you’re better able to set goals. You’re also able to see where you spend your time and how much time you have to accomplish each activity. This process helps you prioritize and cut out what’s not productive.
- In the end, you improve your productivity, so you accomplish more tasks in less time.
Time is a precious resource we all have in limited supply. We cannot make it last forever, and we cannot make any more of it. Our brain works in the same way.
The only way we can increase our productivity is to eliminate useless and non-productive activities and improve the quality of what we do.