5 Hidden Time Eaters in Your Daily Routine
How is it that we all have just 24 hours and yet it seems like some people build an entire business, write their thesis, solve world hunger and still make it to the gym while others are applauding themselves for having accomplished reading a page of the book that has been on their shelf for a month?
Time. It’s a funny, annoying, and finite entity that we can either learn to conquer or allow to get away from us.
Conquering time comes down to your ability to reduce time eaters and effectively use the time you have. There are 5 common activities, mistakes and tasks that I’ve found to be some of the biggest time eaters in daily life.
These things are stealing your limited time, minimizing your effectiveness, and keeping you from living the life you want to live. In this article I’m not only going to share with you these 5 common time eaters but I’m also going to give you the tools to get your time back and even add as much as a 24 hours back into your week.
Social Media
Social media is a huge time eater. The average amount of time spent on social networks is 3 hours per day. This adds up to a shocking 21 hours a week, enough time to qualify as a part time job.
I personally have had to overcome this time eater, when I first learned how much time is wasted on social media I realize that I had built a habit out of wasting time on social media and simply deciding not to wasn’t going to work.
Instead, I deactivated my TikTok account, deleted the Facebook and Instagram apps from my phone, and put a “screen time” limit on the Pinterest app.
I kept these boundaries in place for a few months until I had broken the habit of mindlessly scrolling and habitually opening social media apps without even thinking about it. After the habit was broken I made the choice to redownload the Facebook and Instagram apps as I needed them for work, but I continued to set screen time limits and never redownloaded TikTok.
The “screen time” feature on iPhone is a great tool to set limits and boundaries for yourself with apps on your phone. This doesn’t just apply to social media it could include entertainment apps; Netflix, YouTube, Pinterest, Disney+, Kindle, game. You could also set limits on your work apps to avoid working outside of specified times.
When taking your time back from social media I recommend starting with a detox. Take a break for as long as you can then decide what coming back should look like for you. I promise the benefits far outweigh anything you could possibly “miss” while not online.
Preparation
Have you thought about how much time you spend every day getting ready for something? Whether you are preparing your purse/bag to go to work, making your lunch, or even picking your outfit for the day. All of these things are important and they do have to be done, however they don’t necessarily have to happen every day.
Every Saturday I have what I like to call a “Life Admin Day” (I got this term from MuchelleB on YouTube) A Life Admin Day is simply a day that to get all the mundane recurring tasks done to save you time throughout the week.
This would be the day you do your laundry, prepare your meals for the next week, change your purse or clean it out, sit down with your calendar and plan out your week etc.
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Doing all of these tasks in one big batch saves you a lot of time. If you choose all of your outfits for the week on Saturday when you look at your calendar you know for sure that you don’t have to worry about that outfit not being appropriate for your events and tasks for that day. This will also free up your time to read a book in the morning because you don’t have to go rifling through your closet panicking that you have nothing to wear.
These mundane tasks eat up more time than they should. Just picking your outfit in the morning (depending on the person) can take 10+ minutes x7 days in a week and you’re spending over an hour a week just deciding what to wear. That is one hour that you could spend working towards your dreams, spending time with your family, resting…
Utilizing a designated prep time to set yourself up for success can make a huge difference in how much time you have each week.
Making Decisions
Research shows that an adult makes approximately 35,000 decisions per day, 226.7 of those decisions are on food alone. What’s worse, your finite decision-making capability taps out at 75!
You can only make 75 “deliberate, rational, analytical decisions” per day and you are trying to make 35,000. No wonder you are exhausted on a daily basis, you are quite literally running on empty. So how do you solve this impossible problem?
Stop making all decisions.
No, not really but you can cut down on the number of decisions you need to make each day. A life admin day doesn’t just save you time by doing all the menial tasks for the week at once it also saves you decision-making energy.
If you don’t have to decide what to wear, what to eat for lunch, what to put in your purse, what to have for breakfast or what book to read this week then you just saved yourself 5 decisions that you will definitely need later.
Decisions are a big time and energy consumer and the best thing you can do is cut down on the amount you have to make each day. Start with small changes: take the same route to work each day, plan the order of your day ahead of time so you don’t have to decide what to do first, or eat the same thing for breakfast every morning. Look at your typical day and see where you can cut back on the decisions you need to make, to gain more energy and take back your time.
Notifications
Your electronic devices can be great tools and also great distractions, not just while using it but because of notifications. If you don’t create boundaries for yourself with your devices you will easily end up wasting hours clearing notifications all day.
As with social media when you first start overcoming this time eater I suggest a full detox. Turn off all notifications for a while on all your devices to detox from constantly clearing notifications break the habit of looking at your devices everything they light up and ding. After your detox go into your device settings and only turn on the notifications that are absolutely necessary.
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Depending on your device you may have more options than just on or off. I like to use temporary notifications for emails so I am notified that I received one but the notification doesn’t stay on my phone constantly distracting me. That is ultimately what notifications are; they distract you from what you are working on at the moment, they demand your attention whether they are important or not.
Reducing notifications saves you time and improves your focus all this quick glances and seconds add up quickly, don’t let notifications eat up your time.
Entertainment
Keep in mind these time eaters are not eating away at your time of their own free will, you are allowing and often choosing to let them into your life to some degree. One of the worst ways entertainment eats up your time is having it playing “in the background” while you work. (I call this a split-focus distraction which you can learn more about here.)
Doing this only divides your attention and forces you to lower the quality of your focus as you focus on both the task and the movie/tv show. The only way to solve this one is to stop. Stop playing movies/tv/videos in the background while you work. It will help you in the long run.
It’s important to remember that you are in charge of your time so choose how you will spend it wisely. If you want to take back your time from this time eater you simply have to choose to. What is actually most important for you to spend your time on?
Time eaters are not eating away at your time of their own free will, you are allowing and often choosing to let them into your life to some degree.
TAKE IT SLOW
All of this may sound daunting to conquer if you are trying to do it all at once, but just remember progress is progress. Maybe this week you stop watching Netflix while you work and next week you start setting your clothes out the night before.
As Dr. Marvin from the movie What About Bob would say “It means setting small, reasonable goals for yourself. One day at a time, one tiny step at a time—do-able, accomplishable goals.” Don’t worry about how long it takes you to take back all of your time because all that does is eat up your time with worry, do your best and make small changes to see big results.
Want to learn more about how to be your best, most productive self? Check out my article Clearing Mental Clutter: A Simple Guide to Getting Things Done to start building your productivity system now.
