Tag: wasted time

SCARY CONSEQUENCES 😨

I want to begin this post with a quote from my favorite distracted genius. “If I keep temporarily eating this junk, I’m going to permanently stay fat.” Meaning, if you just eat that one doughnut because they were free in the break room, or have ice cream because you are out with friends and they are having it. These temporary indulgences can have lasting results. I am not saying that going out for ice cream every now and again is a bad thing. I do it myself. What I am saying is that if you have too many of these moments, you will end up with permanent bad results. If you only eat a doughnut when they are in the break room, what happens if they are in there for 3 days this week? If you only go out for ice cream if a friend is going, what happens if several friends go day after day? What if both of these events happen in the same day?

Even having a snack size bag of Doritos has 260 calories. If you have 4 bags a week, that is over 1000 extra calories. See how long it takes running on the treadmill to burn 1000 calories. I can tell you it is a few seconds longer than forever. Eating that little bag doesn’t seem like much, but as you can see if you keep doing this behavior, it will result in some terrible results. That is scary.

Here is a fact to ponder. This is not only true of food. Think of mindless scrolling on your phone. Well, I am only going to watch a few reels. Suddenly, you have spent a half an hour on mindless nonsense. That may not seem like a big deal, but how many times do you do this during a day? Even once a day adds up to 3 hours a week. Meanwhile, our houses are a mess, we haven’t meal prepped and the dog needs to be walked. What do we say? “If only I had more time.” You don’t consider that few minutes of harmless scrolling that bad. Can you imagine what you would do with an extra 3 to 6 hours a week? Even if all you did was get extra sleep, you would still come out ahead. Whether it is a few calories in a bag of Doritos, or a few minutes on reels, take the advice from my beautiful Margie. If you keep doing these temporary behaviors, you will end up with some scary permanent results.

YOU ARE WASTING $36,000!!!

Secrets to an amazing life, what are they? Here is an interesting secret to help you stop wasting your time, be more productive and live a more amazing life. Sounds like a big promise? Stick with me I promise you won’t be disappointed. This secret may shock you at first, it may even make you feel a little uncomfortable. That is okay. Feeling uncomfortable is where growth and positive change occur. It is also okay to feel uncomfortable because you are probably reading this alone. Even if you are not, nobody will know you are feeling uncomfortable unless you start fidgeting nervously.

Here is the secret, it is one we all have in common – you are wasting time. Before you get defensive, just relax. To some extent we are all wasting time. What may shock you is what that wasted time is costing us. According to ZDnet, the average American spends 5.4 hours a day on their phone. Millennials spend a little more at 5.7. Just so we all feel better we will round that down to 5 hours a day. Not all of this time is wasted but a good deal of it is. You start out by trying to learn how to spell the name of an important Egyptian pharaoh that you want to use in your blog and end up watching several YouTube Documentaries on Ancient Egypt, plus a video of a cute dog that looks like a baby bear that your lovely lady sent you…hypothetically. Throw in a few episodes of useless television, and a few other things here and there and we can easily get up to 5 hours a day.

So we waste 5 hours a day entertaining ourselves with mind-numbing foolishness, is that such a crime? Yes and no. If you are looking for ways to live an amazing life, you are throwing away a great deal of opportunity and perhaps a great deal of money. 5 hours a day times 7 days a week gives us 35 hours. That is almost a full work week. In essence we waste nearly as much time as we spend at work each week. Over the course of the year that is 1,820 hours. This amounts to 45 work weeks a year! Next time you find yourself scrolling through social media, imagine what our life would look like if we devoted just half of that time toward a project we are working on or a goal we are pursuing? You could still watch 2.5 hours of surfing cats, but put an additional 22 full 40 hour work weeks towards improving your life.

That may not motivate you but this might. How much do you think an hour of your time is worth? Not just what you are paid at your job, but what is an hour of your time worth? Let us just choose an easy number of $20. The real amount is probably a lot more, but we don’t want this to be too frightening. Now we take those 35 hours a week, 1,820 hours a year we waste and multiply that times the $20 figure. What do you come up with? To save you from doing the math, I will give you the answer – $36,400!

If you are working on your own business, or perhaps writing a book the amount of money you could be making putting that time to good use could far exceed the numbers we have mentioned. Maybe money doesn’t motivate you. After all, there is much more to living at amazing life. Can you imagine how much you could improve your relationship if you spent 22 full 40 hours weeks studying ways to improve your love life? How about your emotional and spiritual fulfillment? I shutter to think how much better my life would be with 22 full 40 hour weeks of meditating. How about spending those 2.5 hours a day on exercised to strengthen the mind? Reading a book in your selected field? Even just sitting down with a pen and paper and thinking of ideas toward your goal.

While it may be uncomfortable to think of how much time we waste, acknowledging that will allow us to make far better use of our time. Recreation is very important and I am not advocating we do not spend any time on activities that help us unwind. That is what the other 2.5 hours a day is for. I think you can see if we even spend half the time we waste reading tabloid magazines from the grocery store, how much further ahead in life we can be. I would love to know what great use of your additional 2.5 hours you have in mind.