6 Ways You Are Wasting Your Time (And How Not To)

Productivity & Time-Management often come together. If you want to be productive, you should be careful where & with whom you spend your time.

We have limited time to spend on this planet. The clock is ticking every moment. As it does, it takes away the time that can never be brought back.

Unfortunately, no one can control this process. What we can control is the way we use the limited time that we have.

You can choose to lie on your bed all day, or get out and do something that brings value to something or someone.

People chase comfort until they are so comfortable that they start feeling uncomfortable.

Choose your goals rather than comfort & you’ll be happy living your dream even if it is not comfortable.

Ultra-successful people like Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Oprah, etc. have enough money to live comfortably for their remaining lives but still, they work every day to bring more innovations & make this world a better place. They have a clearly set goal for themselves.

People don’t realise how much time they waste doing nothing but chasing temporary happiness which brings sorrow later on in their lives.

The life expectancy of an average American is around 79 years. Let’s break it up to find out how much time is wasted on not-so meaningful & unproductive things.

Note: All the figures are rough estimates taken from various studies conducted in the past.

1. Television

An average American adult watches 4.3 hours of TV per day.

For our calculation, let us assume it to be 4 hours a day, which takes around 13 years of your entire life. Let us shorten it a bit more to 8 years as social media (including YouTube) is replacing TV nowadays.

Isn’t that scary?

TV is fun to watch but you’d rather want to do something else with those 8 years of your life.

2. Social Media

Social media has to be next on the list. Often, you might have noticed yourself watching several videos on YouTube until you finally realise that time went by so quickly.

An American consumer spends up to 5 hours a day on his/her mobile phone which adds up to around 16.5 years of the entire lifetime.

3. Being in the thought-loop from the past

Sometimes, you are in not-so-good situations and you curse your life. You recall an event from the past which gets to you another event & this goes on until you realise that the happy times are gone, which further increases your sadness.

All this time, your mind is revolving in a completely different world of the past while you are losing your precious time in the real world.

Let’s consider the time wasted as 1 year of your entire lifetime.

4. People (only the negative ones)

Let me tell you one brutal truth. No one gives a damn about you except a very few people.

If you die tomorrow, except for those few people, no one gets affected. Their life goes on.

People come into your lives, be there until they get their job done, and leave.

Spend your time only with genuine, uplifting, & productive people. Negative and jealous people will only try to bring you down. They are monsters disguised as friends.

Choose your company wisely & eliminate those who are toxic to you.

Keep all the emotions aside & drop them from your life. Otherwise, you’ll regret wasting your time on them in the later stages of life.

5. Not Planning

Never sleep without planning your next day the night before!

You are here for a limited time & the timer is rapidly moving towards zero. Be careful & instead of wondering what to do next, plan out your day beforehand. Utilise your every waking second. If you’ve got some free time, instead of killing it, block that time daily for an activity that you enjoy doing.

You don’t want to lie on your death bed and think that all I did in my life was kill time.

Being productive doesn’t mean always working.

Productivity is spending your time on the right activities that promote your growth. If you find yourself wasting time thinking about what to do next, this is the time for you to change.

6. Not Organising things

Firstly, donate, sell, or discard everything in your house that you do not need. Clean up your house a bit & set a specific location for every item that is needed for daily use. This way you won’t keep running around daily to find where your keys, wallet, socks, etc. are.

If you are thinking that saving such a small amount of time won’t make any difference, Mark Zuckerberg wears the same grey T-shirt every day so that he can save his time & energy to help serve the world in a better way. (I'm not asking  you to wear the same outfit every day, but you get the point)

All the points listed above approximately take up around 3o years of your life. That’s 38% of your life wasted. You might be wondering that you still have 49 years left to live, right?

WRONG.

Assuming, that you sleep for 7 hours a day, you’ll spend 23 years of your life sleeping.

Other daily activities like cooking, bathing, etc. will take up 7 years of your life.

Your job will take up around 11 years of your life.

Your school/college will take up around 8 years of your life.

Adding all this obligatory time, it comes out to be 49 years.

What the heck? All the 49 years went by just like that.

Where’s the time for travelling, learning that new language, learning how to program, etc.?

Well, the good news is, you can control those 30 years that you’ll otherwise waste on pointless activities. Those 30 years are what you have.

Use that time to do what you truly love which adds value to the world. Read, learn stuff, innovate, and create amazing things.

There’ll be people telling you, ‘You are too serious about life’. Either ignore such people or tell them that they are too casual about life.

They are the ones who will live an average life.

The orange part can be customized by you. Make sure you make the best use of it. Don’t let that 38% of your time get wasted.

Set goals, Work on them, Achieve. Repeat the cycle.

And most importantly, Watch your time.

Hi! I'm Keyur. I hope this article was helpful to you and you enjoyed reading it. I also deliver short pills of knowledge and lessons. If you'd like to get one every Sunday for free, you can subscribe here and I'll send them your way.

If you want to get in touch, feel free to write me at keyur@keyurkumbhare.com