3 Ways You’re Wasting Your Too Much Time

The title catches your eye, and you commit.

The page loads up and you’re in for it now. You read this line and got bored. Better check if the article is generic and going to spit out clichés. You scroll on ahead to quickly read the titles. On to the next paragraph. Wait a second, what’s going on here? The headings don’t relate to the title at all. The odd delivery is more intriguing, so you decide to read it in its entirety.

Hands-down you’ve wasted the afternoon as the clock strikes 6:30 PM. You swear this is the last article you’ll read before you get back to work. Someone walks into your room; you switch tabs on the computer in case you’re caught procrastinating. It’s just your dad. He came back from work a while ago but mentions he’s headed out to pick up your mother at her work.

The thought of success passes by to remind you how everyone else around you is putting in so much effort for so little in return. You know yourself that your skills combine with a fraction of effort are still much more productive. Who are you kidding? You are at the computer reading through articles and the latest tech news. In terms of productivity, you aren’t much different. Just wasting less energy.

A notification appears, your friend lets you know that he’s finished the assignment due tomorrow without you. He even took initiative to get started on that presentation due in a couple of weeks. As you switch tabs, Amazon.com presents itself. You remember a package you ordered was expected to be delivered today. Quickly, you rush downstairs to pick it up. Baked in the sun, the packaging feels warm. It’s must have been sitting there for a little while. You return upstairs ripping the packing apart. Back at the computer, Amazon even shares a picture of the package. You reflect on the ever-present photographer behind each photo as the stranger’s silhouette is imprinted onto your front door.

Time to be productive.

1 You always start by looking for shortcuts.

You rather read the 4 headings first and skim through.

That assignment due tomorrow, which you should have already started, is open on another tab. The lecture slides the professor blasts through a couple of weeks ago sit faintly in your memory. Instead of sitting down and combing through the material, you opt to search for keywords. Thank goodness for “Ctrl+F”. The questions seem easy so you hope that the results from your search could just be regurgitated as the answers. Yet, your eyes start searching on their own for the next distraction.

Staring at your monitor all day is exhausting. Online learning sucks. You spin in your chair where “your” closet stares back. Bags of clothes stuffed together. It would be easier to just dump each one at Value Village without opening them up. Because they aren’t in anyone else’s way, you know they will likely remain. However, should anyone realize their sudden disappearance, you pre-emptively feel the grief. Handling it properly would mean going through the clothes with the suspected owner and careful sorting between the donations and keeps. Doing nothing sounds like the better option.

A notification appears again, your friend is probably done with dinner and wants to start the nightly study session. This article doesn’t seem to offer much but you rather keep reading than start being productive. You admit you have been wasting time reading and writing articles (into the void). Your friend is shocked. “Not even watching the Suns?”, the NBA Playoffs have typically been an excuse for nights off. Truthfully, basketball isn’t your passion. Rather, watching basketball has been a way to maintain a relationship with your brother.

There’s no way around it, the assignment is due tomorrow, a presentation is due in a couple of weeks, and a different project after that. There’s a lot of work ahead of you in the coming weeks. It’s expected though as the school term comes to an end. Work starts a couple of weeks before the term even ends. There aren’t any shortcuts this time. The only shortcut is to complete tasks before their due date.

The due dates approach.

2 You tend to look for others to do the work.

This article was supposed to help you be productive. You know it can’t do your presentation for you.

Considering that your friend is done the assignment, you wonder if he’s willing to help you complete it in a sprint. You typically find yourself helping him work through concepts so maybe he can return the favor this time. You barely even read the questions so it might be embarrassing to even ask for help. If the questions are just easy, you could be caught procrastinating.

Others are involved but they need you to collaborate. Not just cooperate. Messaging your friend, “I shall hard drop what I’m doing at 8.” An extra 30 minutes. Maybe he’ll keep working on the presentation. While progress without work sounds great like passive income, the idea of taking the backseat and not taking ownership doesn’t sound great.

What if it’s bad. You think back to the presentations you saw yesterday. Emojis are everywhere on every slide. It was hard to fathom how an individual could think adding an emoji to each bullet point looked good. It was harder to justify the other two members happily going along with it. Just like you, these were undergraduate engineers taking a fourth-year course. The only logic behind the emoji was the fact that the presentations are not even for marks. The apathy towards the quality of a presentation that has little to no impact on graduation is perfectly reasonable considering they, unlike you, are taking more than three courses.

So much work was done to get to this point, so it didn’t make much sense to back down now. 8 O'clock approaches faster than you had hoped. Graduation is approaching with the same speed. You dwell on the somewhat disappointing end to your education towards your first degree. Neither your older brother nor older sister has gotten a degree as your excitement is misplaced. They have been working professionals for years now in their industries, graduating from certificate or diploma programs. Each is recognized with distinction as official or unofficial top of the class.

They can’t help you either.

3 You rush towards the end.

You realize this article wasn’t helpful at all.

The last section of the article. Maybe a conclusion/summary will be put together. You know what you should be doing but still won’t do it. Setting a hard deadline was the right thing to do. It’s time to start working on schoolwork again. Your friend is patiently waiting for the study session to begin.

The guitar behind you sneaks its way into your arms. Trying to cheer you up. You just needed a day off it’s okay. Before you place it back down, it sings “Don’t let it end” — Styx. Reminding you that these moments are to be cherished. Relationships need work.

7:56

You firmly agree you need to step away from the distractions. Today was fun and it won’t play out this way again. But you can’t justify how it was spent. Even your conscience throws its two cents in.

You had the whole day.