Today, we’re presenting 7 bad habits that waste the most time in your day. Which ones should you avoid? We’ll detail each bad habit and explain how it wastes your time and how you can eliminate it from your life. By applying certain principles, you’ll save a significant amount of this precious and non-renewable resource! Do you feel like 24 hours in a day isn’t enough to accomplish everything you want or need to do? Do you feel overwhelmed juggling work, home, and the kids? What if we told you that you could gain at least one hour a day by eliminating some bad habits? One hour a day is significant. So, let’s get started!
1. Multitasking
Multitasking. Doing several things at once. Multitasking is fine for a computer or a smartphone, but not for humans! We tend to do it thinking we’ll save time. But in reality, multitasking makes us lose time and, what’s more, we waste energy. Every time we jump between two tasks, we have to (re)focus on the initial task, and this exhausts our brains. We need a certain amount of time before we’re fully focused on what we’re doing. What’s more, we do things on “autopilot” because our brains can’t focus our attention on two things at once.
Here are some examples of multitasking:
- Reading an email and answering the phone at the same time
- Cooking and making the shopping list at the same time
- Processing bills and watching TV at the same time
Our advice
Okay, you get the idea, obviously, you need to focus on one task at a time! So how do you do that? When you’re focused on a task but you’re interrupted, or your attention is drawn to something else, stop what you’re doing and jot down your idea on a piece of paper. Go back to your task,k and only when it’s finished should you move on to something else or to what you’ve written on your notepad. At first, it might take a little discipline to stay focused on a single task, but you’ll quickly feel the benefits, and you won’t want to do it any other way.
2. Notifications
Notifications are convenient, but they can also be detrimental. Every time a notification pops up, it makes you stop what you’re doing and wastes your time. Do you really need to check your status updates every time they appear on your phone? Do you really have to read that incoming email immediately?
Our advice
The simplest and most effective solution is to turn off notifications. It makes perfect sense! You’ll no longer be interrupted by the temptation to check Facebook and other social media, but you’ll decide when you want to check them. Not during an exercise that requires concentration, but during a well-deserved break.
If you don’t want to turn off all notifications because, for example, you’re expecting an important email, you can put your phone on silent mode. This gives you minutes 100% dedicated to your task without being disturbed.
3. Social Networks
Social media wastes a lot of our time every day. We know this, and yet we keep going back. Our goal here isn’t to make you feel guilty. There’s nothing wrong with spending time on social media. However, we are often not fully aware of the total amount of time we spend on social media. We just want to quickly relax, catch up on information for 5 minutes, and start scrolling, and without realizing it, minutes or even hours have passed. At the end of the day, we feel tired and frustrated because we feel like we never have time for activities we care about. But if we think about it for a moment… How much time could we reclaim for the things we enjoy, to move forward with our projects, if we limited the time we spend on social media?
Our advice
So how can you limit your time on social media? First, it’s helpful to be aware of the amount of time you spend on these platforms each day. To do this, simply go to your settings. If you want to know how, click here for Facebook or here for Instagram.
Next, you can go a step further and set a “time budget.” When this “time budget” is used up, you receive a reminder. If you absolutely want to stay on the platform, that’s possible; it’s up to you to decide whether or not to respect your own set limit.
4. Procrastination
When you procrastinate, you’re not productive. You’re essentially wasting time. You know what you’re supposed to do, but you don’t really feel like it. So any excuse will do. But you know perfectly well that, in any case, you’ll have to have completed this task at some point! By constantly putting it off, it just becomes urgent, and subconsciously, you put unnecessary pressure on yourself.
Our advice
Since you’re fully aware that this work will have to be delivered sooner or later, why not just take care of it yourself? There’s a very simple rule: anything that takes less than two minutes, do it right away. And if it takes more than two minutes, then schedule that task for a very specific time in your calendar, but don’t put it off once the time comes! It’s as simple as that.
5. Not planning
We’re talking about the three basic tools for good organization. But it’s all well and good to have a notebook, a planner, and a to-do list if you don’t use them. Without planning, we don’t know exactly what we need to do and when, and we constantly have to ask ourselves what the next task will be. And by doing so, you risk neglecting what’s most important. Imagine you’ve hung your laundry out to dry. Then you start thinking about what to do next. Pay the bills? Go grocery shopping? Okay, you decide to go grocery shopping first since the fridge is empty. When you get home, you put the groceries away,y and then you stumble upon a bag of expired medication that you were planning to return to the pharmacy. You head back to the pharmacy. When you get home, you realize it’s already time to prepare dinner. You eat, clean the kitchen, and put the children to bed. The day is over, and you’ve forgotten to pay your bills and call the garage for the car service.
Our advice
Now, imagine the same scenario but with planning. On Sunday evening or Monday morning, ng you have listed everything that needs to be done during the week: call the garage, return expired medications to the pharmacy, pay the bills, do the shopping, et Every morning, you take your weekly list and choose the three most important tasks to accomplish that day. On Tuesday, for example, you might plan to go to the pharmacy, do the grocery shopping, and call the garage. This way, you’re much more efficient and avoid wasting time. You’ll tackle what needs to be done without hesitation. One thing at a time, and one thing after another. Simple as that! Ideally, schedule time for planning in your calendar. On Sunday evenings, set aside 15 minutes to prepare for the week ahead. And schedule a 5-minute appointment every morning to plan your day. You’ll quickly become adept at this and will do it without even thinking about it, I promise!
6. Do not group your tasks
Did you grasp the concept of planning in the previous point? Let’s delve a little deeper. If you don’t plan your weeks and days, you’ll waste a lot of time. As mentioned earlier, time is wasted when you have to think about what you’re going to do. But you’ll also waste time if you don’t group tasks of the same type.
Let’s return to our example of tasks to complete during the week. If you don’t group them, your day will look like this:
- In the morning, you go shopping
- Next, you call the garage to make an appointment.
- Afterwards, you go to the pharmacy to drop off your expired medications.
- You come home and confirm your child’s attendance at their friend’s birthday party.
- You start a washing machine.
- And you end the day by taking out the invoices to make your payments.
Our advice
Now, let’s look at the same day but with your tasks grouped. You’ll be more productive and, therefore, waste less time:
- In the morning, you complete tasks that require a single trip: grocery shopping, going to the post office, dropping off medication at the pharmacy, etc.
- Next, group the administrative tasks: call the garage to schedule an appointment, pay the bills, confirm your child’s attendance at the classmate’s birthday party, etc.
- And finally, a few household chores: starting the washing machine, folding and putting away the laundry from the previous load, …
You’ll reduce travel, which often represents a huge waste of time. You’ll only need to sit down at your desk once to handle administrative tasks, and you’ll never again struggle to organize your paperwork. Finally, you’ll be able to take care of all your laundry without procrastinating.
7. Saying yes too easily
How many times have we regretted saying “YES” to an invitation or request when we didn’t really have the time or energy? There are times in life when we’re overwhelmed and can’t manage everything on our to-do list. Why add even more in that situation?
Sometimes we agree to things simply to please others. But by saying yes to one thing, we give up something else. So, if we agree, for example, to help out at the school fair, we must be aware that this time is no longer available for ourselves or our families. We’re not saying we shouldn’t help anyone anymore. It’s simply that we should choose carefully how we want to use our time. Saying yes to every request can be very time-consuming.
Our advice
The next time someone asks you for something, take a moment before saying “yes” immediately. Consider whether you have the time and whether the reasonable request truly benefits you. If the answer is yes to both questions, you can go ahead and do it. You’ll also find that the time you spend with others will be more enjoyable. If, on the other hand, you are already overbooked, or the request brings you nothing, then don’t hesitate to say “no”. Politely but firmly! When we talk about “bringing you something,” it shouldn’t be interpreted as opportunism. You can certainly say yes to requests without expecting anything in return. If you derive satisfaction from it, it’s worthwhile, and we’re not talking about wasted time.
Conclusion
In this article, we’ve listed seven bad habits that waste time. There are hundreds of them, and we’re not experts on the subject. What we do know is that by limiting multitasking, intrusive notifications, time spent on social media, and procrastination as much as possible, we can already save a lot of time. Furthermore, with a little organization and discernment, we can better focus on our priorities and feel the benefits every day. There’s no feeling more frustrating than wasting time. We only have one life!
