Wasting Time

Do you feel that you waste time in your life for unnecessary things?

When you have many paths to a certain destination, what would you do as a human? Yes, you will take the specific path with less resistance by taking the easier route. When we have a decision to make between working on a particular task versus wasting time, we all tend to choose the waste of time as it is the much easier task in a similar manner. In addition, if you have innate resistance for a certain task and find it does not motivate or activate you, then the chances of wasting time increases.

Let us take an example. If being a singer is your passion, then will you surf the Internet during your one hour of singing practice? The answer is a clear NO. Because if you have a certain task in a passionate area of your interest, most probably you will not waste time with other time replaced tasks.  

I guess very less percentage of our Sri Lankan population manage their time efficiently.

So, this month I will share my ideas about wasting time.

Wasting time can be the number one enemy if you are a student. Most of the time, the students of mine complain about inadequate time for many academic and non-academic activities that they are being assigned to do as undergraduates. But if you have a discussion with the students about their lifestyle, the first thing that I note is their time-wasting activities. Sometimes they are engaged in such activities with or without their knowledge.

What did I do to avoid wasting time?

1.     To work productively, first you need to have a suitable environment that supports time management. Remember the more you stay around the environments with useless conversations, small talks and gossips, the more you will be wasting time in your life.

2.     I started to schedule my day according to my activities with top priority. Once you assign specific time of the day for certain tasks, you can stay on track with your focus without wasting time. While scheduling, you can shift some deadlines or decentralize your work with another person. You should not be a rigid person as there should be a room to reprioritize your tasks without stress in your daily schedule.

3.     Then I focused to complete the most important and urgent tasks on the first place. Such tasks can be the ones that have a bigger impact on your life. Even they can be inter-related to your goals and associated with bigger projects of your life. Completion of these tasks will make your day highly productive compared to smaller tasks on your to-do list on daily basis.

4.     Allocate a specific time for your deep work. The term ‘deep work’ was coined by Cal Newport, an assistant professor of Computer Science at Georgetown University and it describes as the focused work done on a particular task for an extended period without any distraction. As a physicist, deep work is really important for my productivity as many of my meaningful tasks related to academic life require long periods of concentration. According to your lifestyle, you can do deep working at the specific time zones of the day where your mental and physical energies are at peak.

5.     I became a deadline lover without giving excuses. Whenever I am given a task, my automatic question is ‘What is the deadline?’ Setting deadlines have become incredibly helpful in my life to finish my important and urgent tasks on time while balancing my life and career.

In addition, I have noticed that many of us waste time due to the lack of our energy management. Each task requires a specific amount of your energy. In planning the daily schedules, we should be aware of our fluctuating energy levels during the day.

For example, I never prepare home assignments or final papers or answer guides during the night time because by that time I am very exhausted after 18-20 hours of continuous work. Night time of mine is allocated to low energy consuming tasks such as responding student inquires, replying mails, have friendly chats and beauty care routine.

The bottom line is that we must have a realistic understanding of our energy consumption over the required energy for the tasks ahead. In short, your working patterns should match your energy levels. No matter how hard you work with high concentration levels, there is limit and your brain will automatically command you for resting. Hence, do not view sleeping or relaxing time as a waste of time. It is the ideal time to recharge your bio-battery for another productive day.

As a person, it took some time for me to identify, convince and accept the fact that I was wasting time too. Building the self-discipline to overcome your identified time-wasting habits was the toughest part for myself. In my case, I identified that I put more weight on the distractions from the physical environment and my smart phone.

Actually, you cannot get rid of your time-wasting habits within couple of days. Sometimes you may take weeks or several months to overcome them. Hence, you need to have patience to see improvements in your lifestyle with a long-term plan.

So, do work out on your time-wasting habits in a realistic way! Once you succeed, you will be definitely be amazed about your saved time to explore your undiscovered potential as a human being. 

(This article originally appeared in Probe - March 2023)

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