Focus on What Really Matters
There are many things people get pretty fed up with – and one of the most common targets of a normal person’s ire – is themselves. It’s quite normal for your inner voice to say to you, ‘Honestly, I am pretty fed up with your shit!’ That’s sad – and it’s scary too – since getting pretty fed up with yourself is not that great for you.
One of the things many people get most fed up with themselves about is their tendency to waste time. I personally spent maybe 40 years or so getting pretty fed up with myself over how I spent my time, and specifically how much of it I seemed to waste.
I don’t have that problem any more!
Here are a few things I’ve learned, slowly and with some difficulty, on my journey towards not feeling like I am wasting my time.
So here are 7 easy ways to stop wasting time.
Thing I’ve Learned #1: Staring Out the Window is Not a Waste of Time!
This one was a fairly easy one to learn since the evidence was so clear.
For a while, I worked in an office with a gorgeous set of windows that looked out on mountains, sky, and the city below. I loved it! I would look out the window periodically with pleasure, and then return to my work refreshed and fairly enthusiastic. This was quite an accomplishment given the otherwise loud and stressful aspects of my work. But looking out the window from time to time made the experience of being in an office more fun somehow.
Then we moved offices to a warehouse with no windows whatsoever. Immediate change in vibe! Everyone was more stressed, irritable, hunched over, and less collegial. Getting the same amount of work done took more time. Coming in early didn’t help. Staying late became more and more of a necessity, given that the work was still loud and stressful. Working late when it was somewhat more peaceful was the only way to keep the same level of productivity.
It turns out, staring out the window was a moment of Zen that counteracted much of the stress of the environment. Staring out the window was productive! Now I make it almost a religious practice to periodically stare out the window throughout the day to keep my productivity up and my energy high.
It still works! I recently spent some time in an office without much access to natural light or windows and boy was it was fatiguing, difficult to concentrate, and hard to find inspiration. People were crabby and not so nice to each other.
Staring out the window makes a difference! Find some way to stare out the window as often as necessary throughout the day to keep yourself refreshed and your energy at a reasonable level. Even the Harvard Business Review agrees! Their article even has tips for getting some of the benefits of window-staring if you don’t have access to windows.
Stop beating yourself up for doing what’s natural and spend some quality time staring blankly into a beautiful space.
Thing I’ve Learned #2: Venting is Not a Waste of Time
I’m naturally task-oriented, which is why I gave myself such a hard time for wasting time. It’s as though I saw life as a series of tasks, and I gave myself points for completing them.
Then I worked somewhere where people seemed hardwired to spend all day talking and talking and talking and talking and maybe ‘getting ready to’ complete a task. It was hard for me. Everyone else seemed to work at a slower pace than I did. I had to adapt.
What I learned from this is that people need to vent. They need to rant, complain, bitch and moan and process the upsetting emotional content of a normal day at work and talk through problems. Life is not a series of tasks. It’s more a series of relationships.
I figured out how to let people talk and boy did I get a lot of problems solved that way. Seemingly intractable problems. People loved my willingness to let people vent and complain and acknowledge the hardships of the work so much that when the personnel of our group changed and an individual who was willing to talk but not so willing to listen was put in charge of some things – damn did the problems multiply. And I heard about it. A lot.
Let people vent and let yourself vent. It’s a natural way of both solving and coping with problems.
The time you might be inclined to spend researching rational solutions to your problems can often be better spent by talking them through, and not necessarily in a chipper manner.
The key is to not let the venting and complaining and bitching and moan process amplify the negativity, but instead let both you and the other people affected come to terms with it and figure out whether or not to do something about it. All hail venting!
Thing I’ve Learned #3: Sometimes You Gotta Play a Game Online
One of the things I used to be so fed up with myself for was my need to play online games. Nowadays, of course, people can make big money playing games but if you’re not a professional, playing games can seem to yourself and others like a waste of time.
And then somehow, randomly, I realized that playing games is my form of meditation. For a period of time, I am immersed in the flow of something, tuning out all the random thoughts that bedevil a normal human. My heart rate and breathing slow to levels associated with meditation.
Playing games takes concentration and sustained focus. It refreshes the brain.
Now, when I need a break, I often fire up a game. While I am playing, whatever is bothering me pings through my brain in the background. I just let the distressed thoughts bounce around in the background without judgment, letting them do their thing. I have found that whatever I might be inclined to brood on – the psychological defenses, the self-pity, the anger, the sense of injustice, what have you – they play themselves out if I give them a chance to do their thing without giving them my full attention.
Playing games is great way to detox after a hard day’s work.
The thing to do is incorporate this kind of break into your planning, so that you don’t feel guilty. If you feel guilty and then do it anyway, you can end up spending all your time doing it because you feel guilty when you stop. Playing games then becomes an addictive habit of escaping the feeling that you shouldn’t be playing games but should be doing important and urgent productive shit instead.
In other words, you can set reasonable limits and not get so immersed in escape that it’s jarring to drag yourself back to reality. Make a plan and slot those life-enhancing games right in!
Thing I’ve Learned #4: Don’t Confuse Procrastination with Wasting Time
They’re actually different things. Procrastination is not doing something right now.
Wasting time is doing something that makes you feel not so good, doesn’t have any payoff, and lowers your mood. Binging on Yellowstone can be a waste of time if you kinda feel like crap afterwards, didn’t really enjoy it, and only did it because everything else you thought you needed to do seemed so awful.
Binging on Yellowstone is not a waste of time if you thoroughly enjoyed it, felt refreshed afterward and found yourself ready to tackle whatever else you wanted to do.
Procrastination, on the other hand, is simply a strategy for doing things at the last minute or not doing them at all. Doing things at the last minute can be a productive strategy. Not doing things at all can be a productive strategy. If you are going to put things off, just put them off!
If you are going to put things off in the hope you’ll never have to do them, then just acknowledge what you’re doing and try to edge those things off your to-do list.
If you’re putting things off and yet you are convinced that a) you will have to do them and b) doing them at the last minute absolutely will not work – then use the time-honored strategy of breaking things into tiny bits. If something is absolutely unpleasant or fear-inducing, then do it in the smallest increments that work.
If you have to make 7 unpleasant phone calls, do 1 a day first thing in the morning and get that day’s unpleasantness out of the way ASAP. You’ll feel a rush of relief to have gotten it done, and you’ll get a bounce for the rest of the day. Plus – you don’t have to dread another one for a whole 24 hours!
Bottom line – if you quit worrying about the fact that you’re procrastinating and just procrastinate on purpose, you’ll waste way less time. You’ll spend much less time doing things you don’t want to do just to avoid doing something else you don’t want to do. Procrastinate on purpose, not by accident! (And don’t let anyone else give you any shit for it either.)
Thing I’ve Learned #5: Just Calm Down and Take a Step Back
This is the hardest one for me personally. I can be normally calm AF, but when I’ve got in the back of my mind that time’s a wasting and I’m under pressure, I find it very hard to calm down and take a step back. Instead, I just want to narrow my focus, put my head down, and power through whatever is stressing me.
Unfortunately for me, this is not a good strategy. I end up doing things I didn’t need to do because I can’t prioritize. I do a bunch of tasks, but not necessarily the most important ones or the ones that really needed to get done. I get compulsive and anxious.
Getting anxious is a recipe for fleeing to distractions. It is a truth universally acknowledged that the Internet is a gigantic cesspool of distractions that make it very hard for people to be productive and complete tasks that require concentration or focus.
So the first step is to calm down. Take a deep breath. Take a look at what you actually have to do.
This can be painful, partly because when you’re overwhelmed, you don’t really know what you have to do. Everything gets lumped into a giant ball in your mind labeled ‘too much.’ Force yourself, if you can, to figure out what you actually need to do, and when.
Make a list. Write it down. If you feel like you don’t have time to make a list, then you definitely need a list. Don’t try to remember everything. In fact, try to remember as little as possible about all the things you have to do; it will only stress you out more. Write it down, choose one thing to deal with, forget about the rest, and deal with them when the time comes.
Nothing wastes time like having a jumble of stress-inducing stuff in your head. Get it out of your head, on paper, breathe deeply, and think only about whatever it is that you’re doing.
What I’ve Learned #6: Doing Nothing is the Most Glorious Freedom
I used to think that doing nothing was wasting time. I scheduled my days to the minute. And then I berated myself for not getting everything on the schedule completed. It took me a loooong time to realize that not doing anything is a form of freedom and self-expression.
Now I schedule in nothing time. No obligations. No tasks. I can just putter around and do whatever I want. I can be spontaneous. I can take advantage of opportunities. I can experience freedom. And I can express who I really am from time to time instead of who I think other people think I should be.
Nothing time is not a waste of time. Nothing time is a form of self-enhancement. It’s where creativity and learning bloom. It’s growth time. It’s rebalancing time. It’s investing in your relationships and go with the flow time. And it can be a necessity.
The thing about nothing time is that it forces you to prioritize and focus on the most important tasks that you have to and want to complete. Get those down and give yourself some nothing time.
Nothing time is a powerful motivator to get the stuff you need and want to do completed because you can truly relax when you’re done. There is no greater reward for doing stuff then not doing stuff!
What I’ve Learned #7: The Cult of Productivity is a Scam
I belonged the cult for many years. And I got scammed. The happiest times in my life were not the most productive times. And my ‘productivity’ didn’t really add much, if any, value to the world.
I added value to the world when I hung out with people, listened to their problems, pursued passion projects, invested in relationships and not tasks, and loosened the fuck up a bit.
Most of the cult of productivity is based on the idea of making more money for the people who pay you. The essential bargain is that what you produce is more valuable than what you get paid; the employer makes a profit on you that encourages them to keep you employed.
This bargain worked for most when the difference between what they were paid and what they worth was reasonable. But in the last 40 years, worker productivity has gone up way more than worker wages. The discrepancy between profits and pay is now astronomical. The essential bargain of capitalist employment no longer holds. The investor class (which produces little value in reality and sometimes negative value) scoops up almost everything, and everyone else gets not enough to build a decent life on.
The idea that if you work hard, you will make money and ‘get ahead’ is something few people who are not affluent boomers believe any more. Young people and their parents have come to the gloomy conclusion that their children will never be better off than they are, and may be worse off.
Furthermore, AI promises to revolutionize the very notion of productivity and annihilate many, if not most, forms of current work. Being ‘productive’ right now is fundamentally disconnected from future gains in material wealth or quality of life.
The thing that hooks people into the cult of productivity is that ‘productivity’ is rewarded with status. Being busy gives you status in many professions. And people both need and want status. The desire for status was what lured me in. And I felt needed, maybe even somewhat valued, as well as obligated to all the people I had promised things to in the name of productivity.
There’s an old saying: No one ever said on their deathbed ‘I wish I had spent more time at work.’ The essence of life, what is really valuable, is your relationships. The meaning of life is to gain wisdom.
You cannot gain wisdom if you are constantly chasing productivity, as the dire state of our world today proves. We are drowning in productivity, and sorely sorely lacking in wisdom.
You can free yourself from ‘wasting time’ by focusing on what truly matters in life. And of course, by staring out the window and doing nothing.
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