Are You Wasting Your Time Wisely?
How efficiently do you use your time?
Do you consider 1 hour of your time to be important? By itself, 1 hour isn’t that long. What about 1 hour per day? Still doesn’t sound like much, does it? Let’s stretch this thought experiment even further. Have you ever considered what 1 hour per day adds up to over a year?
Ok, so it doesn’t take a genius to work out that it would add up to 365 hours over a standard year. But why is this significant?
Well, 365 hours adds up to just over 2 weeks and 1 day. This means if you spend just 1 hour per day doing anything; reading, playing video games, exercising, scrolling Instagram, watching paint dry, whatever. It adds up to over 2 weeks and 1 day per year.
That’s 15 entire 24-hour days with no sleep.
Do you spend 1 hour per day on social media? I know you’re laughing at that question, thinking, “Is this guy serious, just an hour?”, because we all know that most of us spend a lot longer on social media each day than just 1 hour. I suspect most people will have clocked up their first hour on social media before 10 am.
I’m not going to spend this article helping you brush up on your times’ tables. It isn’t hard to work out what 2 hours per day over the year adds up to (over 4 weeks). Or what 3 hours per day adds up to (6 weeks), and so on. I’m pointing out that when you break it down like this and then add the figures up, it’s an eye-opener just how much time we spend doing things.
Now, it’s not so bad when you’re doing productive or useful things with that hour, or activities that you enjoy, but what about the time you spend on things that you don’t like, or even worse, you know you’re wasting your time on?
I think you know what I’m getting at here. Most of us are wise enough and honest enough to admit that the biggest time killer of all, these days, is social media. How many hours per day get spent scrolling endlessly, wastefully?
Even the most driven amongst us can fall into the trap of scrolling for hours, feeling terrible afterwards when you realise how much more constructively you could have spent your evening. On the rare occasion that someone asks me what I do to kill time, I almost blow a fuse. I don’t consider any of my time worth killing.
Unfortunately, I know some people who spend every spare moment of their day staring into their phones, scrolling and scrolling on Facebook and Instagram. They don’t realise that they are wasting large portions of their lives doing this meaningless, pointless and useless activity.
One of the hilarious things about wasteful social media use is how so many people are aware that they waste far too much time scrolling news feeds for no reason. We make jokes about it, making empty declarations such as “I know I need to cut down on this, haha”, yet do nothing about it.
When I did this little arithmetic experiment a few years ago and realised what 1 hour per day totals over a year, it shocked me so much that I now consistently make an effort to waste as little of my time as possible. If I find myself wastefully scrolling, I quickly nip it in the bud and redirect my attention to something more fulfilling or beneficial.
I may be shining a spotlight on social media here but no matter what you spend that hour on, it adds up.
I’m not saying social media can’t be good. There are some groups on Facebook I’ve found useful, for instance. Some of the social media channels are also great for business purposes and engaging with clients, especially for us freelancers. However, what I’m highlighting are those hours, those countless hours, spent scrolling for no reason and with no purpose.
Surely, there is at least one thing you’d prefer to do?
I know it’s difficult to break the habit of social media scrolling. I often take long breaks from Facebook. My longest break lasted for 2 years, but I regularly take breaks of at least 1 month, every few months. I’m currently on week 3 of a break. It’s good for you. Try it.
We can all get carried away and waste our entire Saturday afternoon doing nothing despite our great intentions, or come home from work planning to spend the evening finishing that online course and then kick it to the curb. I’ve done this myself. I still find myself doing it. Only now I’m much better at not doing it.
Ultimately, I think it’s more important than ever to realise that time is the most valuable asset you have.
Please waste it wisely.
The author writes on a variety of subject areas. His key topics are productivity, motivation, education, psychology, life, literature, history, and sometimes even more light-hearted stuff.
