Everyone’s so busy these days! We wake up, we go to work, we have to stop by Time Warner after work to drop off that old router, then an old friend wants to catch up, then our boss surprises us by letting us know we need to turn in that report tonight, and by then it’s 11 PM and when are you going to have any time to work out or work on that startup idea you had?
At least, it seems that way. When you ask folks if they’d like to spend time together, we all hear the same thing: “I don’t have the time.”
It’s possible they’re telling a white lie to get out of spending time with you. That they do have the time, but they’d rather spend it getting some work done, so they have more time to spend with someone else, later. But if that’s the case, there are an awful lot of people around telling that white lie.
I suspect that we’re not all telling lies to each other; we’re telling a lie to ourselves. The lie is that we don’t have enough time to do everything. So, whatever gets added to the calendar first is what gets done.
The fact of the matter is, we all have the same amount of time. Elon Musk runs three billion dollar companies with the same twenty-four hours you use to drop clothes off at the dry cleaner and grab a sandwich at Wendy's. If you aren’t able to do what you want to be done in that twenty-four hours, the problem isn’t your calendar; it's you.
That’s the secret this headline promised. But it needs to be explaining. What does it mean that you’re the problem?
Well, if you’re complaining that you never have enough time, you’re probably packing your day with high-time, low-reward activities. Most people in America do. In fact, many such activities in America are considered valuable.
Activities like:
- Stopping in on social media. Most folks pause throughout their day here or there to message someone, send some snapchats, scroll down their Twitter feed - but combined, these take up 3.8 hours of your day. That is four solid hours you could be spending with friends, reading that book you have sitting on your nightstand, or finishing up that home improvement project. (If you want to learn how much time you as an individual waste on social media, RescueTime can tell you).
- On a related note, pulling out your phone. What can feel like five minutes of wasting time can often be upwards of fifteen minutes (or more). For the average American, this adds up to four hours of the day. There is some overlap between phone and social media use - but not as much as you hope. And it turns out most of us underestimate our phone use. To see how much time you spend on your phone, download an app that will tell you.
- Driving. Driving to and from work is a necessary evil, but many people waste a lot more time driving around running unimportant errands. In the age of Amazon, the most significant way to waste time is driving half an hour to a store and back to buy something that can be packaged and shipped to your house (for less money, I might add). Many major grocery chains also offer grocery services where they pick the items off the shelves for you. All you have to do is show up at the store and have them load the bags into your car. This can save you multiple hours a day of driving.
- Puttering around. This includes activities like: Standing in front of your fridge, staring into its depths as if it has the answers to life’s great questions. Sitting in front of the TV and watching whatever it happens to be playing for a few minutes. Staring into your closet wondering what clothes to wear for today. These activities have little to no value in your life, and yet they take up valuable mental energy.
That bulleted list makes it seem so simple. Most of these time-wasting activities are easy to spot. It’s so easy for me to sit here and write “stop doing these things!”
And yet, people still do these things. Why?
We’re forced to conclude that it isn’t the wasted time that concerns people. In my case, I spend time running errands because there is nothing, in particular, I’d rather be doing. So the problem isn’t that I don’t have enough time; it’s that I don’t have the will to do something else.
But if we’re wasting time, turning off our brains, why not go whole hog? Regarding relaxing, spending two hours watching a movie is always more rewarding then spending two hours browsing low-performing HuffPo articles.
I suspect that it is because we are not willing to turn off. There is a pressure in American culture to go-go-go, to be doing, creating, achieving. There is no space in American culture for relaxation, for watching a movie. Sure, we do these things, but we always say we're doing these things with a tone of apology. There’s an implicit understanding that the ‘ideal’ action is to be working, and that relaxing is an unwanted but necessary part of existence, like getting sick or having bowel movements.
It’s regrettable that Americans feel ashamed of this because relaxation is as sweet and valuable a part of life as work. When we feel ashamed of relaxation, we try to squeeze it out of our phones at work or social media at home, like teenage students trying to gossip when the teacher’s back is turned.
There is no teacher. We are in charge of ourselves. It’s time to let ourselves know that it’s okay to take a break.
This is how people waste their time. Instead of working, or relaxing, people drift off and spend their time in between. It slips away from them without their knowledge. Then they come out of the trance, dazed and blinking, wondering where the hell the day has gone.
In previous ages, it wasn’t possible to fritter a day away this way. The farm needed working, the meat needed curing, the goat needed milking, and a million other things. On top of that, there were no phones or internet. If you weren’t working, you were staring at a blank wall. If your only other choice is crushing boredom, it’s pretty easy to choose work.
In this day and age, it is the frittering which is so easy. Notifications blink and pop and bounce on our devices and the devices of everyone else around you. Other people bob their heads, ducking in and out of their phone like it’s their only source of air. It’s hard to resist the urge when everyone else is doing it as well.
My call to action is this: permit yourself not to be doing. If you are going to be doing, do - don’t waste time on social media or driving around or standing in front of the mirror wondering which shirt you’re going to wear. And if you don’t want to, don’t - put on your nightie and rewatch House M.D. for the seventh time. Whatever you do, don’t waste time doing neither.
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You make an excellent point. So many times we find ourselves doing useless tasks because we want to be productive, but we don't want to actually get things done. I try to limit how much time I spend on social media by keeping track of exactly how much time it consumes. Most people don't even realize just how much time is lost to activities that aren't actually making us any happier.
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