Life has all the potential in the world to be an amazing adventure, where you gather all sorts of fantastic and memorable experiences, overcome obstacles, pursue and achieve goals, and forge all sorts of deep and meaningful relationships and connections.
Unfortunately, however, virtually everyone is familiar with the guilty sinking feeling of wasting time, and the sensation of regret and self-doubt that can come along with it.
In many cases, experiencing significant setbacks, such as an accident that requires the assistance of a skilful car crash lawyer, can serve as a “wake up call” to begin living with more intentionality, and to waste less time. Although, of course, that may still be easier said than done.
Here are just a few tips for wasting less time on an everyday basis.
Use tools and systems that require the least amount of input from you
Often, a significant cause of lost time can be trying to use certain tools and systems – either for managing the details of your everyday life, or in a professional context – that are simply difficult to manage, and that require plenty of input and tweaking in order to work.
In some sense, wasting time goes hand in hand with being overly wrapped up in particular platforms and services that specifically strive to hijack and capitalise on your attention – such as leading social media platforms.
By specifically looking for tools and systems that require the least amount of input from you, you can ensure that those tools and systems help to facilitate the more important things you want to do in your life, rather than keeping you preoccupied indefinitely.
For many people, this simplicity is one of the great attractions of Apple versus Microsoft products.
Keep your daily to do list and routines concise and manageable
Procrastination is often driven in large part by having to do lists and routines that are so complex, and that seem so overwhelming, that it’s difficult to find the motivation to move forward and actually take action.
Instead of allowing yourself to feel overwhelmed, keep your daily to do list and routines as concise and manageable as possible – so that you not only maintain a clear sense of what you should be doing on any given day, but so that your tasks also feel manageable, and you are actually motivated to achieve them.
Do what you can to reduce exhaustion in your daily life
A huge cause of wasted time is simple exhaustion, which leads to both reduced efficiency in all sorts of different ways, and also significantly reduced willpower, motivation, and clarity of mind.
Wasting less time in your day-to-day life could ultimately be as simple and straightforward as taking extra steps to reduce your baseline levels of exhaustion, such as by having a more reasonable and balanced bedtime routine, and allowing yourself a bit longer each night to get restful sleep.
With more energy and a better mood, your time will naturally tend to stretch further, and you will usually be less likely to procrastinate or to lose focus.