3 Ways How You Waste Time
People who take your valuable time away are time vampires. You can decide to eliminate them from your life. Entertainment and sports are other popular ways how people enjoy wasting their time.
One of the most critical life skills anyone can learn is to value their time and attention. Following that is deciding to eliminate time wasters from your life. Time wasters can be people, entertainment, and sports. The good news is that you will become more productive when you get rid of these things. Society wants to distract you with these circuses to prevent you from being a practical person.
When you are an effective and productive individual, you become someone that society and its institutions cannot control.
People
You are never going to please everyone. You should not aim to please everyone. There is no reason for you to charm people in general. The types of people you can eliminate from your life include:
Toxic people
Negative people
People who don’t share common interests and values
People who are not working toward similar life goals
People who tell you what you want to hear
When it comes to time wasters, they can range from toxic people to people who tell you what you want to hear. These are all people to be aware of. It would help if you decided where your line in the sand is to cut people out from your life.
Toxic people are bad because they can be manipulative. A toxic person can also use you to achieve their ends. They will tell you it is for your benefit but have no problem steamrolling over you. Ending a friendship with a toxic person is a freeing experience. You won’t realize how much a toxic person negatively affects your life until you end the friendship.
Negative people don’t help you, either. While toxic people can be premeditative about their actions to use you for their objectives, negative people often have a negative mindset and suffer from a defeatist mentality. A negative, or fixed, mindset believes that skills and interests are established from birth, and this means one cannot improve one’s skills according to this mindset. A pessimistic attitude can affect how you think about yourself and others.
Pessimism is different from realism. A realistic view of the world and human nature is healthy. A pessimistic view can negatively influence how one operates in the world.
You want to spend as little time as possible with people who don’t share the same interests and values as you. It is vital to know your principles, and they are up to you to determine. If you do not know your foundational values, you will allow people to influence you with their values.
You want to eliminate people who are not actively working toward similar objectives. The people you include in your friend circle are critical. If you are ambitious, you should surround yourself with friends with equal determination. You want to learn from other people. The people you may learn the most from are people who wish to do similar goals as you.
The people you hang around reflect you. Choose your friends and community wisely.
You want to avoid surrounding yourself with people who only tell you what you want to hear. These people only always say nice things and never say anything that may be viewed as aggressive. You do not want your social circle full of “yes” men—people, who only tell you nice things. You can also consider getting rid of anyone who you think only tells you nice things.
There is nothing wrong with disqualifying people from your life. You change, and your friendships should change as well.
Entertainment
Entertainment is another way that you can lose your valuable time and attention. You could spend more of your time being entertained rather than being productive. You may find yourself scrolling through the news because you think you must keep up with what is happening in current events for some reason. Entertainment has a broad range, but popular forms of entertainment are:
Movies and streaming videos
Video games
Going out to eat
Social media
News and politics
When was the last time reading or watching the news improved your life?
Hollywood movies used to be entertaining, but now it primarily produces old, rehashed ideas. The hero-themed film continues to be repeated to death (Batman, Justice League, and The Avengers). If it is not some retelling of a superhero, Hollywood is pushing some current issue down the audience's throat (even if it doesn’t fit in with the movie). The same can be seen with what videos are available to stream on sites like Amazon and Netflix.
Video games are distractions too. You can immerse yourself in virtual worlds from fighting in a war (Call of Duty) to horror (Resident Evil) to sports (FIFA). Video games will eventually be able to give you a fuller immersive experience once virtual reality matures.
Going out to eat is a form of entertainment because you may want to people-watch, catch a sports game, or spend time with friends. It is also getting more expensive to go out to eat or go through the drive-thru. You may go out to eat or meet your friend for coffee or drinks to be social. If your conversation is not worthwhile, you could waste valuable time, attention, and money.
Social media is designed to be addictive. It is not by accident because you, and your data, are the product. Social media companies want you to spend as much time on their platform as possible.
Attention is a form of currency. Attention as a currency comes in the forms of advertising revenue., clicks, and views. Your attention is valuable. That is why knowing who, what, where, and how you spend your time and attention is critical.
News is another distraction. You may think you need to keep up with every current event, but that may result in living a life of fear. The same people and corporations own the various mainstream media outlets from the news (i.e., CNN to Fox News) to newspapers (Wall Street Journal to The New York Times), as Harvard University’s The Future of Media found. This is why there is only a slight variation of the same across the news outlets. They won’t say anything that goes against the people who own mainstream news corporations.
Probably just a coincidence. 🧐
Politics is another diversion. You don’t have control over what a politician votes for or against. Politicians care the most about getting reelected to stay in power, so they will tell their constituents what they want to hear. Political elections now cost millions, even billions of dollars, not to run a political campaign. Big corporations spend millions of dollars in donations (i.e., lobbying) to buy off politicians. Money buys influence and can drive policy. Politicians may frame it by saying it is in the interest of their constituents when the lobbyists are the ones who have leverage over politicians.
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Sports
While this is a category under entertainment, sports are often treated as their own thing. There are entire bars that cater to sports fans. People follow sports teams religiously, and sports are another way people enjoy wasting time. Some people get really into fantasy sports and sports betting.
They can watch sports by going to a sports bar or watching it on television. Sports are the modern-day gladiatorial coliseum for Americans. They can drink beer and bar food (pizza, wings, burgers). People can watch sports with friends at a bar or host a watch party. Sports are the modern-day circuses.
Greece had athletic games, and the modern Olympics is based in the Greek amphitheater. Athletes would compete against each other. The gladiatorial games were the popular circus in Rome's days in the Roman Coliseum. There were violent fights and athletic competitions. Modern sports are merely an updated version of those with less violence.
Solutions
There is nothing wrong with entertainment and leisure, but you limit your full potential when you live to be entertained instead of productive.
You can end your relationship with the types of people who do not benefit you, from toxic people who say what they know you want to hear. You can end your friendships with people who distract your attention. You can tell them directly that you want to end your relationship with them or block them across your devices. It will vary from relationship to relationship.
Surround yourself with like-minded people. Do not feel bad about eliminating toxic people who only tell you what you want to hear from your life. Ultimately, those people are time wasters, and your valuable time and attention are better spent elsewhere.
You can start to practice basic time management skills when it comes to entertainment. You can limit your time to watching movies or watching YouTube videos. You can restrict how much you read or watch the news, even independent or alternative news, to increase your productivity.
You can only watch the main sports games most matter to you. You could also decide to cut out sports altogether, except for the ones you do yourself or with friends for exercise.
You can learn to cook to save money instead of always going out to eat or to the drive-thru. Cooking will also allow you to follow a better diet, which can help you lose weight at a healthy pace when combined with exercise.
You can consider following news and politics less to gain back more of your valuable time and attention. Rather than taking the word of a newscaster or a politician, you can start to question authority and think for yourself. You can do your research and arrive at your conclusions on a subject rather than be influenced by the news or stick within a political party’s narrative.
Think for yourself—question authority. Get rid of people who don’t benefit you. Achieve your goals. You can thrive as a single person!
All eyes on me in the center of the ring just like a circus
When I crack that whip everybody gon' trip just like a circus
Don't stand there watching me, follow me, show me what you can do
Everybody let go, we can make a dance floor just like a circus
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We’re not for everyone.