Why Time is money? Top Time Wasters.

Why time is money?

95% of the people work; to earn money, unless you want to give up the worldly connections and meditate in mountains. As humans we all have different needs to survive and those keep on increasing with our life phases. Money satisfies most of our needs.

Even if our need is only pure love but if our stomach is empty ; the human survival instinct will go for food rather than love. To earn money we only have the time which we have to utilize. Time is too precious to be wasted. Many of us regret at some point of our life that we wasted so much time in the past. the thought “If i would have done this , it would have been different today” comes to all at some moment.

How can we say that we are utilizing our time?

Here we need to start thinking from the basics. Ask yourself the following questions:

What are my goals in life?
What makes me happy ?
What kind of identity do I want to create for myself?
How do I want people to remember me during and after my life?
Am I giving quality time to my family and close ones?

If our answer to the above questions are clear. This means we have a plan for life. When we are doing something which supports our plan means we are utilizing our time. Our perception considers that work as productive and that time being utilized.

Doing Any work that gives us value means we have utilized our time or spent our time in the right direction.The list below contains various things that we do which waste our time. However a task can be a time waste for one and productive for the other. This totally depends upon the value provided by that task to the person.

Top time wasters for all:

1. Overthinking

Overthinking is the biggest time waster as it does not help us to reach any conclusion easily. Life is not that long to overthink – we need to do the action. Mind is an ocean of thoughts. When we overthink about a topic our subconscious mind populates itself with random, irrelevant thoughts as well. Therefore it’s very important that our thinking is backed up with research, scientific methods and study so that we don’t lose direction.

2. Having no plans or goals

When we don’t have goals for the year/ month / week or the day, that is the time when we start giving priority to unimportant things in life. Therefore it’s important to manage our life with proper goal setting and plans. We should move towards the direction of making our own identity.

Social media a time waste or a time utilize?

We have heard this from so many people that using social media like facebook, twitter, youtube is a time waste. But again if we give it a different perspective it may become a productive for someone.

Let’s say a person is introvert and low on self confidence. Talking on social media for half an hour a day boosts his confidence level in communication. As this is a value add for him, he can add this to his timetable as well. However if using social media is not connected with a plan or GOAL and he just scrolls it, He watches random stuff for a non fixed time, then surely the time will be wasted.

Social media nowadays is used a lot for promotion as we get a large audience there. It depends upon what a person does on his account or page and how one makes it valuable.

3. Unproductive things

World is full of situations or stimuli which makes us think or do some work accordingly. It depends upon us which situations we give attention to and which one we should ignore. Few activities waste everyone’s time irrespective of different perceptions like –

a. Gossips

Taking pleasure in knowing whats happening in others life is a really interesting and time consuming job. It takes away our mental energy as well. we need to accept that everyone have their own karma and luck. We need to free our self from others thoughts and focus & connect with our inner self.

b. Long entertainment shows

Why are we even interested to know what’s happening in celebrities’ lives. Yes there is a 40% of time in a day which you can give to entertainment but the source still can be productive. It’s better to spend some time with family playing games than watching TV.

c. Sad News

Stop reading or watching sad news. We can’t have sympathy on so many problems of the world , neither can we give solutions to them. So there is no point in switching the news channel for an hour just to know that the world is full of tension. A perfect selection of the news as per your profile is required which actually gives some benefit to you.

d. Daily greetings on messenger.

On whatsapp there is always one aunt/ someone in the group who sends a good morning message or a flashing news, riddle etc. Then they expect a revert within sometime. Its better to mute, unless its your kill time of the day.

e. Oversleeping or under sleeping

Rather than having a time bound sleep, now humans have to focus on quality sleep. A kid requires different hours of sleep than an adult or an old. Sleep does not have 1 formula for all. In your growing years you may need more sleep. E.g. An early teenager who has 2 hour sports activity, 5 hours of school, 2 hours of coaching on daily basis may need a sleep of 9 – 10 hours to become fresh. Whereas an old person who has no physical activity during the day can have 6 hours of sleep. The aim should be having quality sleep which helps you get refresh and recharged for the next day.

f. Clicking many pics

Have you thought about this – is there really a need to click so many pics? Then our phones memory gets full. We start putting our time in Organizing our phone/ laptop for pics, documents.

We generally don’t even look at half of the pics after clicking. There is no need of clicking 4 pics at the same angle. Then we don’t like many of them and we just use our storage.

4. Travelling for work

Living in the metropolitan , with big industries around attracts more people to relocate and makes the traffic worse. I personally feel commuting or travelling to work is a big time waste especially when i drive. An ideal time to travel everyday should be between 15 minutes to half hour (as a short distance also takes this much time).

If you drive then that time can be utilized as refreshing time by listening to your favorite music, signing out long. However you are at a benefit if you use public transport. You can utilize that time by doing the non productive but important things of the day. E.g. if you have to call someone, make some to-dos, do some coordination etc.

5. Being physically unfit or sick

Its very important to invest in our mind, body and soul on a daily basis. The universe also works on the concept of balance. So we need to balance our work, relations, needs and health in order to lead a life which is healthy.

6. House chores

Doing house chores is a good thing but it really is not a value add. This is moreover a personal point. I feel if i do all the house chores myself like cleaning, cooking, washing i am wasting my half day i.e. my energy and time in unproductive things. If you have the money then spend it by hiring a maid. That money invested to save your time will do wonders for your future if utilized to carve it. However if its not possible then doing multitask and smart work is the option for you.

7. DIY everything

Though its good to “do it yourself” as you learn, you save cost. But you don’t need to learn all the things in the world by yourself. You should have 1 dream in life and should learn relevant things to it rather than wasting time on random things. It is better to delegate your irrelevant task to someone else for whom it can be beneficial.

8. Distracting people and negative emotions

Yes people! There are different types of personalities which affect us in the most peculiar way. But there are few we should be extra precautions for, specially those whose basic human emotions leads towards negativity. They not only waste our time but affect our mindset.

Having a relationship which is not productive is a big no no specially if you are in your career building years. Our life is not that long to give us chances to make our identity. The age range between 22 to 32 years is when we get our degree, we think of developing a career and then earning identity and a way of living out of it. This is the same time when our super active hormones need someone special besides us. If you are getting benefits in a relationship then you can accept it as a good investment. But if it drains out your peace, makes you emotionally unstable, distracts you from your dreams. Then it’s high time to stop giving it your worthy time and move on.