Don’t let them drain your energy and steal your potential.
Don’t let time-wasters drain your energy and steal your potential — take charge of your life by kicking them to the curb once and for all.
The world is loud. Time-wasters everywhere.
Everywhere we go:
- noises
- music
- ad screens
- posters
- smells
We process everything unconsciously.
If you think: “Well I don’t get influenced by the ads I see” you are wrong. Your brain processes everything.
They want us to consume: to spend money.
We are wasting time and energy processing all the input, and then we are wasting time and money buying stuff we don’t need.
Then you ask: “Where did all my time and money go?”
They went to all the distractions around us.
How Can You Remove Time-Wasters From Your Life?
It’s hard to remove something from your life.
It’s a habit to come home from work, lay on the couch, and watch some TV to relax. I know that.
A habit is an automatic behavior. Like brushing your teeth: you do it the same way every day.
There are good and bad habits, and by replacing a bad one with a good one you can easily change your behavior.
Our usual goal is: “I want to decrease or remove X from my life.” But that’s harder than it sounds because you are then missing something.
Instead: replace your bad X with a good Y.
For example:
I’m always watching TV while eating, I can replace it by listening to a podcast or audiobook.
Instead of playing video games when you are not motivated, go for a walk or listen to some motivating music.
1 mistake I made a lot of times: I wanted to change everything at once!
I got so overwhelmed that I quit after a week.
Instead: start small and with 1 thing!
Start with 5 minutes of reading instead of watching the news.
What the book “Atomic Habits” by James Clear suggests is: to stack your habits. If you want to start flossing, make it a habit to do it after some already-established behavior like brushing your teeth.
This is your cue to floss. And after a while, your brain will add it automatically to your stack of habits.
What Are Your Priorities?
Let’s make a small analysis of what you are doing every day. Find the time wasters of your life.
Are you spending your time with your loved ones, or on social media scrolling?
After you know what you are doing all day long: we are now setting our priorities. What are yours? How do you want to spend your limited time on Earth?
I know that you don’t prioritize social media consciously, but by not setting priorities you get distracted by the media. They are built to get your attention.
Consciously deciding that your friends and family are more important will help you recognize the distractions and you can prevent wasting time there.
Friends and family are more important, but social media, TV series, and video games are made to be addicting. Scrolling makes you want to see more and more. The series always has cliffhangers, so you want to continue watching.
I worked as a game programmer and I know that there is a psychological strategy behind every game: the small path between interesting and engaging, not too hard and not too easy.
Consciously decide how you want to spend your time!
Establishing a new habit is not easy, but if you stick with it for a few weeks you will see great results. And then: you can take the next step!
Small tip: it’s ok to skip a day because you forgot or you were busy. Don’t be too hard on yourself.
We are all human. But never skip two days in a row!
Conclusion
The modern world is made to be distracting for you. Big companies are paying a lot of money for ads and marketing strategies to get your attention.
It’s hard to not get influenced or distracted. I know that.
But by consciously deciding how you want to spend your time and then replacing the bad habits with good ones, you can kick the time wasters out of your life.
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