Source: AJ_Watt / Getty
Our World In Data reports that the average human life expectancy, even with all of today’s modern medicine, is 72.6 years. Keeping in mind that you might sleep for one-third of your life, you don’t even get to push all of those days of all of those years to the limit. Time is so precious. Everyone has some ideas of what they’d like to do with their time here – what would make them feel that they lived a full life. There are some ways we cannot completely control our time. Going back to the sleep thing, don’t try to cut down on that, because that could just cut down on your overall life expectancy, says the National Center for Biotechnology Information, which defeats the purpose of having more time. If you’re like most of the world, you have to work. And if you’re like the majority of that group, you don’t do something you love for work. Even those who are fortunate to do what they love still have to do tasks they don’t love within that.
All in all, there is some inevitable claim on our time, from the moment we are born. So how we spend the moments we do control is so important. And we do control a lot of it. Being more intentional about how you spend your time, and particularly being aware of these time-wasters, can help you lead a more fulfilling life. Here are ways, big and small, you probably waste your own time.
Morning social media scrolling
Statista reported that the average person spent 145 minutes on social media every day in 2020. That’s nearly two and a half hours a day on social media. What are the odds that a good chunk of that was actually moving someone’s personal or professional goals forward? Very little. Even those who need to use social media to promote their business can likely get away with spending just 30 minutes on social media every day. We all do it: we pull up a social media app just to “pass the time” for a few minutes, and by the time we look up, it’s been a half hour. That can happen several times a day. The morning is a big one. You get up, ready to take on the day, but first…check Instagram. Suddenly, you’ve lost steam and motivation, and you’ve been scrolling for 45 minutes.
