How To Keep The Time-Wasters From Taking Over Your Life

A 10-step guide, learned the hard way

The most important thing you have in your day is your time. How you apply and wield that time will determine the course of your life.

Not to be too dramatic about it, but — yeah, that’s pretty much it. If you have three hours, how much of it are you spending on what you want to do, versus what other people want you to do? Or, put differently, how many times have you blown off the gym, an event, a meal, a family member, or even just remembering to get up and walk around because of twelve thousand tiny messages in the aggregate? In the age of email, text, tweeting and what I like to call the Insta-Ask, all your time can and will be taken up by other people if you let it. This is, alas, the Way We Live Now — and it requires will, fortitude and strategy to resist.

But resist you must.

Resist you must! You can trust me on this one — I’m not only waging an uphill battle against my various inboxes (personal email, work email, Twitter, Facebook, GChat and SMS), but I have actually BEEN this time-waster of which I speak. Which means I know the secret to disarming or at least neutralizing them, hopefully with no tears.

Okay that was time spent reading 206 words that you’ll never get back. Let’s get to it.

1. The Long Emailers

You know the type — why say it in 50 words when you can say it in 800? Hi, I’m Rachel, and if we’ve dated this is hella familiar. There are three ways to handle this person:

(a) Answer inline — If you actually care about what they’re saying and want to respond, put your responses in all-caps in the body of the email. This will efficiently impart information in the most reader-unfriendly way possible and signal that you are thisclose to punching them.

(b) Skim it, then reply quickly to whatever stuck out as important. If you missed something they’ll say so.

(c) Ignore. You are busy.

There are a few ways this can backfire on you. If they are diabolically good at office politics or romantic self-sabotage, they might have deliberately buried crucial intel in a long, rambling email. (Also, if you are dating this person and they send you a long email and you ignore it, just know that they are counting the seconds it is taking for you to respond and there is likely an explosion in your near future.) Sometimes it works to wait a bit and then write a new email saying, “I read your email and want to respond in full — more soon.” The deliberate ambiguity of “more” and “soon” should buy you some time.

Otherwise, know that the Long Emailer is writing as much for themselves as for you. They have thoughts and feelings and clever references that must come out, and you are the closest person around to receive them. It’s okay. They’d love the feedback but they also just love that you are there to share with. If you’re not, alternate steps 1 and 3.

2. The Multi-Messagers

You are not dating them, and they did not give birth to you. Even so, the Multi-Messagers somehow manage to be in touch with you more than any other person in your life. Just thought you’d like to see this! Do you know her? Should we try that? Double-checking to make sure you didn’t miss this! Is it raining where you are? Look! A pony! Whatever you may be doing, you can count on it being interrupted by this person via email, text, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and, God forbid, phone. For whatever reason, you are uppermost in their thoughts, and they have a lot of thoughts. You only have one: LEAVE ME ALONE.

They write because they care, and once the vein stops throbbing in your temple you can concede that their intel is often useful. Your best strategies:

(a) Put their email in a folder that skips your inbox. There, that’s one less place where they will be forcing themselves onto your eyes. Check it when you remember (don’t worry, they will soon remind you via another platform).

(b) Pick an inbox. Only reply to messages sent there.

(c) Ask them not to ping so often. Be direct. Or, if that’s too fraught, be indirect, as in “I wish I had a dollar for every email you send me, because then I’d have a lot of money and also please leave me alone.”

(Recently I had someone text me *during* an email exchange. Please only do that if I end our conversations with “Love you!” Because only people who love you will tolerate that kind of solipsism.)

3. The Chatty Texters

Picture this: You are busy. You are working. Your phone pings. It’s a text. Whoever it is from, they are interrupting you. If it’s your mom, be nice, she just learned to text and she’s all excited. Going down the scale from “Mom” to “Random person who friended me on Linkedin,” your obligation lessens considerably. Texting implies urgency and makes us feel the need to reply more urgently, too — but actually it’s just that the Chatty Texters had a random thought and happened to be near their phone. Their problem, not yours:

(a) Text back and say, “Hi, I don’t like texting, could you use my email address please? XYZ@XYZ.com. Thanks.” This is definitive about both your practices and preferences so only the pushiest will push here. (And if they do, say, “I find it distracting. Thanks for understanding.” Then mute your phone.) Email forces a bit more formality into the interaction and allows you much greater time between responses.

(b) Every time they text, reply with “Who’s this? New phone!” They will eventually be annoyed into submission. If you absolutely need to go nuclear follow that up with “Oh,” and then don’t respond further.

(c) Only use that as a last resort, it’s kind of crushingly mean. I know, I have experienced it.

4. The Needsters

Hi can I pick your brain? Wanna have coffee? Or the worst: Wanna have breakfast? (Noooooo never breakfast!) It is important to give back, yes, but if you are rising in your career over time, you will also notice that the number of requests for your time is rising, too. You are not only allowed to say no, you must, unless you are Hermione Granger and McGonigal just gave you the time-turner. Here are three easy ways to address these requests:

(a) The open-ended ask: “Hi I would love to sit down and pick your brain.” If you want to be helpful, you can say, “Happy to meet you but my schedule is keeping me in the office. Shoot me your top two most pressing questions and I’ll try to answer them.” If they are good questions maybe you can have a chat, but either way you’ve cut off their open-ended query and limited the expectation about how much time you will spend responding . Or you can say, “Sure! My rate is $450 per hour, plus snacks. I’d love to help you!” It is amazing how considerate people become with your time once they have to pay for it.

(By the way, it is okay to not always want to be helpful. Use your judgment. Life is short.)

(b) The quick ask that will take you five minutes and save them three hours: How can you not do this? It only takes five minutes! True, but you only have 288 of those 5 minute blocks in each day, and 96 of them are spent sleeping, 18 of them are spent eating, and probably another 36 are spent showering, brushing your teeth, commuting, running errands, visiting the bathroom, opening mail, and other things that just take up time in your life. Plus you’re allowed to go to the gym, have hobbies, read the news, have a social life and catch up on “Orange Is The New Black.” Somewhere in there, you’re supposed to work at your actual job which pays you the money for rent, food and that Netflix subscription. So, do you really have five minutes to spare, when Death lurks everywhere? That’s up to you and how paranoid you are about Death lurking everywhere.

(c) The person you’ve said no to so much you feel guilty: “We should get together” can mean lots of things on a scale of “We should get together!” to “We should never get together!” Sometimes good intentions are thwarted by timing — and sometimes, you really just have no desire to have lunch with that person. In the case of someone who has asked so often that it’s now getting uncomfortable, stop for a second and acknowledge that discomfort. This person has put you on the spot and you’re feeling awkward. Great. Now go ahead and excise it from your decision-making process. Now apply the same calculus you’d apply to any ask — is this worth my precious and limited time? — and decide accordingly. Remember, Death is lurking everywhere.

(Also, it goes without saying that the person doing the asking should pay for lunch. It is truly the height of obnoxiousness to badger someone for a meeting and then expect them to pay for you.)

5. The Tweetsters

The Tweetsters are people who want you to tweet something for them. Or Facebook, Linkedin, etc. — wherever there are eyeballs, that is where they want to be. I know, I know — the call is coming from inside the glass house! Mea culpa: I make this ask frequently.

It’s just a tweet, right? Yes and no. You get to decide. Here’s how:

(a) Sometimes it’s not a good fit and that’s okay. You know what feels authentic to share and what your audience can use. If it’s not a good fit just say, “Hey Rach, this one’s not a good fit for me.” Rach will understand and appreciate your directness, and will think carefully about her next ask.

(b) Your friend’s paycheck is not your problem. If Rach is getting paid to circulate links, that’s awesome and totally her job. If this link is different and important, Rach will let you know, and then you can figure out whether to help.

(c) Someone’s asking for money! Your friend’s marathon charity, birthday charity, annual fundraising gala and passion project are all important and worthy of support. If you can afford it, you probably should, because life is short and Death still has his eye on you. If you can’t afford it, maybe a tweet is a good way to support more affordably. Use your judgment — donating to needy kids is probably more pressing than funding your friend’s artisanal bottling startup on Kickstarter.

(And thank you to all of you who donated to my fundraisers for DonorsChoose & She’s The First!)

6. The Phoners

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!

(Don’t answer. There. Done.)

7. The Open-Ended Questioners

The Open-Ended Questioners fall into two categories: (1) The people who offload all the communicative work to you with missives like “What’s up???? Work??? Guys??? Life??? Tell me everything!!!!!” and (2) The people who open an email exchange with something discrete, and then when you respond discretely, they hit you with the open-ended conversation-extender. (This is a classic strategy for forcing your ex into an email exchange.)

Whatever the circumstances, you never owe someone an explanation just because they ask. (It took me a really long time to learn that.)

(a) If you care about this person, you respond to the former with “Hey! I’d love to catch up properly, can I call you on my walk home from work?” or at a similarly convenient time for a call. (Phone: it’s secretly efficient, shhh.) For the ex desperately trying to engage you in conversation, you can disengage firmly yet gently with a simple “It’s good to hear from you. I hope you’re doing well.” (The abovementioned “More soon” works here too.)

(b) If you do not wish to engage with this person, you can repel them forever by answering “Crushing it! I invested in Uber and should have invested in Tinder, if you know what I mean. Hahahahahaha YOLO!” I mean, I hate myself just for typing that.

8. The Favor-Danglers

They can be super-helpful to you and you both know it. You don’t want to be pushy, but also, surely it doesn’t require yet another get-to-know-you lunch. Is this person looking for a friend, a date, or something other than what you would like to offer them ? Here is a tip: If they want to be helpful, they will be helpful. That is usually true for investing, hiring, partnering, mentoring and dating. There are exceptions of course, and authentic relationships are built over time — but if you feel like you’re being strung along, you probably are. Cut the cord.

9. The IRL Linkbaiters

Raise your hand if you’ve ever gotten this email: “Hey can you call me? Thanks.” Wow what’s going on that’s too sensitive to put into an email? Oh nothing, the person just wanted to talk to you about something THEY want. Easy fix: “I’m in a meeting can you email?” Done and done.

10. The People Who Write Really Long Posts About Things That Probably Shouldn’t Take So Long

I refer you to #1 — what can I say, I’m still learning. I hope this post was entertaining and useful, and if it wasn’t, I hope you skimmed it. After all, Death lurks everywhere.

Rachel Sklar is the founder of Change The Ratio and TheLi.st. A former lawyer who became a journalist who became an entrepreneur-feminist-founder, she has seen her inbounds go from people who wanted to pick her brain about leaving law to people who wanted to pick her brain about getting into journalism to people who wanted to pick her brain about startups. And now you know her tricks.