Wasted Time Today? Here’s How to Get Back on Track

We’ve all wasted time. But sometimes, we waste a bit too much time. The other day I watched a Skip & Shannon video on YouTube (a sports show mostly about the NBA and NFL), and then, I watched another video about the NBA. I watched the first video around 10 pm.

The next time I looked at the clock, it was about 12:15 am. Wait, what? More than 2 hours on my tablet? What happened? Well, wasting time. That’s what happened.

When you do it occasionally in your free time, it’s no big deal. But there are many people who waste time during the day at work. A while back, I did a study and found that at least 88% of the workforce admits to procrastinating for at least one hour on a typical workday.

When we don’t make any meaningful progress, we feel like crap. We know we’ve wasted precious time and it can demotivate us from doing better. It becomes a negative downward cycle. And before you know it, you feel like you’re wasting all your time.

How can you break that cycle? How can you get back into a productive flow? Here are three things you can do.

Let go of metrics

We give ourselves a hard time when we focus too much on the outcome of an activity. Let’s say you wake up in the morning and think to yourself, “I should run 10K today because I haven’t exercised in weeks.”

This doesn’t help with motivation. First, imagining yourself running a tiring distance can demotivate you. It also encourages procrastination (“I feel too tired right now. Maybe I’ll do it tomorrow”). Also, if you don’t hit your metric, say, you only finished 8K before giving up, you’ll only feel bad about yourself.

The better solution? Just say, “I’m going to exercise today.” Period. No metrics. Maybe you’ll walk 3 kilometers and that’s it. This is fine. You can walk/run again tomorrow.

The key is to do something you can easily sustain. Just show up and keep showing up.

It’s very corny and obvious advice, but there’s a reason people often talk about showing up.

Enjoy the process

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