Introduction
Time is a very interesting resource. We can’t touch it. We can’t feel it. Neither can we taste it.
Yet we have a way of knowing when we use it well or we waste and let it drip. What makes it even worse is that time wasted can never be recovered. So, we got to be very careful with it.
Somehow, we easily notice how and when we waste it on a large scale. We notice that we spent an hour on social media or that we watched TV for three hours.
Or that we chatted over a cup of coffee with a fried for two hours. Or that we went to sleep one hour later than the usual time but just can’t put a finger on what caused the delay. However, these are not the only ways we waste time.
We waste time in dozens of ways each day.
Many of these time wasters are not always obvious, but you know what? The time can really add up over the course of a day, a week, or a decade.
Don’t let your time just dissolve away!
Or else you’ll always find yourself gasping for it.
Imagine how much you could accomplish in that time!
What could you do that really matters to you?
And you know some things are best done only at a certain time.
In this post, we’ll share the silent time wasters and strategies to guard against them. It really doesn’t matter where you are in life and who you are, time wasters apply to all of us.
Whether you are a stay home Mom, Executive, Manager, Professional, Semi-skilled worker or even Politician, you need to master the art of protecting yourself from micro time wasters.
So now, let’s dive in.
Table of Contents
Strategies To Help You Guard Your Time From The Micro Timewasters
Silent Time Wasters
Apart from these obvious ways of wasting time, there are those ‘harmless’ actions that we take which slowly eat into our time and make us fail to achieve our plans for the day.
They include:
1. Going for your phone charger
2. Waiting for the web page to load
3. Checking e-mail
4. Going for beverages and/or snacks
5. Fueling your car
6. Meals
7. Looking for ‘lost’ things
Luckily, there is a way around this. You can protect yourself from these time wasters by being deliberate in what you do, when you do it and how you do it.
Strategies To Help You Guard Your Time From The Micro Timewasters
- Have a phone charger with you.
How many times in a week do you need a phone charger and have to go into the other room to fetch it?
Have multiple chargers and keep them handy in the locations you spend the most time.
● It’s not just the time it takes to get the charger. It’s the disruption to your thoughts and workflow. Plus, once you leave the room to locate your charger, who knows what else will grab your attention along the way.
2. Internet speed.
How much time do you spend waiting for a web page to load? Or a movie to stream?
You might not think you’re waiting for very long, but it all adds up. If your internet is noticeably slow, your time is being wasted.
Solution: Look for a way of getting faster speed e.g., by contacting your local internet service provider for advice
3. Checking e-mail.
It just takes 10 seconds to check email, right? Hardly! That quick look alters your concentration, and there’s no telling how far down the rabbit hole you’re going to go.
● You might open three emails, respond to one them, and then remember that you have another email to answer.
● What if the email is a link to a video of a cat chasing a dog?
● It’s impossible to predict when you’ll get back on track.
4. Beverages and/or Snacks.
(a) Beverages
This is the mother of all micro time wasters.
How many times do you get up from your desk to get a drink?
Irrespective of how sizzling and how many times it is, it’s too many. Keep a beverage handy when you’re working. Take a sip and get back to work.
(b) Snacks.
Many of us like to have a bite in the course of working. Keep something healthy available.
If you have to go to the vending machine for a snack, you never know who you’ll run into or how long you’ll be gone.
5. Get gas for your car on the weekend.
You don’t want to mess yourself up on Tuesday morning when you leave the house with just enough time to make it for the morning meeting only to realize that your car needs gas on the way to work.
You drive into the Fuel station at an alarming speed and start honking at every one to get out of the way!
Before you know it, you’re mumbling how slow the attendants are. What follows is you lose your temper at a time when you need it most (for the morning meeting).
The secret is: Plan ahead.
6. Meals.
There’s something about food that seems to excite us.
No day passes without us thinking of food.
We spend a lot of time thinking about meals, planning meals, buying food, cleaning dishes.
If you have to stop on the way to work for breakfast, go out for lunch, and then pick up something at the store for dinner, you’re wasting a lot of time.
● Go to the store once a week, at most.
● Have food that can be prepared quickly and easily and doesn’t require multiple pots and pans to prepare it.
7. Looking for “lost” things.
Isn’t it amazing how when you need to use something, you suddenly realize you just can’t figure out where it is or at least where you last saw it?
This could be the simple things that you use daily such as your keys, purse, wallet, a pen, your shoes, socks (or one sock) jacket, umbrella, or anything else you’ve temporarily misplaced.
So, you embark on a memory trip to try and locate them and it can take you from one room to another, one drawer to another etc.
Bottom line — Keep the essentials in a particular place at all times.
● For example, don’t ever put your car keys anywhere but in the decorative bowl by the front door. Your pen should be on your desk. Your shoes should be where your shoes belong if they’re not on your feet.
Conclusion
The big and the micro time wasters are all robbers. After you’ve eliminated the big wasters of time in your life, start looking at the tiny wasters of time.
You’ll quickly realize that their impact on your life isn’t as insignificant as you may have thought. Don’t let life slam at you for disregarding time.
Every disruption has a greater impact than just the amount of time the disruption robs from you. Consider the loss of focus and momentum.
It takes time to get back on track mentally after you’ve turned everything upside down in the house or your workplace for a pencil or that little car key.
Guard your time with all you have because it’s all you’ve got to succeed and be happy.
Thanks for reading.
As always, I love to hear your feedback.
