Life is so busy. Most of us are working full time, commuting, managing family obligations, and on and on, taking up our time and making it difficult to take back control of the day.
We also have goals for ourselves that will improve our quality of life, our happiness, our health, and more. But when the days get busy, it’s so hard to set aside any time to achieve these goals.
Eliminating and Replacing the “Time Sucks”
One of the first things that we notice, however, is that the truth is a bit more complicated. It is not always that we do not have time. It is often that we prioritize things that are not productive to our day. Easily the #1 example of a “time suck” (an activity that dramatically reduces the amount of time we have in the day) is the time we spend on our phones. The average person spends 3 hours and 15 minutes on their phone every day. That is roughly an entire day (24 hours) on our phone every week.
Yes, of course, if you lose an entire day a week to your phones, you’re not going to have much time to do your daily activities. The reality is that you’re losing even more than that, because most people are only awake 16 hours of the day. So, you’re really losing almost 2 full days out of a 7 day week browsing your phone.
Of course, that is not the only “time suck” we have in any given day. We waste time on commuting, or on unnecessary errands, or on working longer than we need to work just to make things perfect. We may also find ourselves watching TV shows we barely enjoy, or “vegging” on the couch for longer than we need to. Yes, our days are stressful, and many of these provide an escape. But an escape that adds additional stress is not really an escape at all.
Getting Your Time Back
It is for these reasons that we need to make an effort to reclaim our time and use it on our goals. We can do this in a variety of ways:
- Eliminating the Time Wasting Activities – See if your phone offers limits, or delete any apps that waste time. Most social media apps, for example, can be safely deleted without it affecting your personal and social life. You can keep your profile, even check it once in a while on your computer, but removing it off your phone can help. For non-phone related time wasting activities, set reminders (using your phone for this one purpose) that tell you to stop what you’re doing and focus on your goals instead.
- Make Your Goals Public – It’s one thing to eliminate time wasting activities, but it is quite another to replace them with activities that help you achieve your goals. One effective way to do this is to put your goals in a prominent place in the house so that you’re always reminded of them, and then make sure that you set a plan to knock out different activities every day. Doing so also helps fulfill that sense of satisfaction that can fuel you to reach your goals even more.
We are busier than ever before. But, for most of us, there IS time available to help us achieve the things that we want to achieve. Look at your life and figure out where your “Time Sucks” are, and then make every effort you can to cut them out and replace them with more fulfilling activities.