In my last post, I wrote about finding time and grabbing time. Found time is easy. It’s five minutes at Starbucks and 20 minutes while you’re waiting to pick up someone at the airport. How do you manage to grab those gobs of time, though, like an extra hour a day or an entire week?
Lost Time
I probably watch any kind of video – TV, youtube, Instagram, TikTok – less than an hour total each day. I’m not a productivity guru – I just never got into the habit of watching much besides Saturday cartoons, and now I’m too old for that. According to numerous sources, the average American spends about five hours a day watching TV or streaming video, which I find just astounding. That’s. practically an entire work week.
Where I do lose a lot of my time is social media. I get bored with what I’m working on and check Facebook, LinkedIn , Bluesky, Instagram, Reddit, Discord or Quora. Next thing I know, I’ve lost half an hour.
How to waste less time on social media
Here are three simple tricks that work for me:
- Quit your least favorite app. For me that was easy, it was Twitter. It had just turned into a lot of people yelling about politics.
- Delete at least some of the apps from some of your devices. Facebook is on neither my phone nor iPad. I found I was on Quora way too much so I deleted that from everything. I have Reddit on my phone and tablet, but I don’t have the login saved on my computer. Just that 30 seconds extra where you have to login can keep me from going on a site.
- Find something else that is a brief break. Not eating. You’ll get fat. Here is a funny one. On my recent trip home, I was gifted an enormous number of beads by my oldest daughter. She says it is to do crafts with my grandchildren but I’m pretty sure the real reason is because she hates me.
Of course, as any sane person would expect, the cases (yes, cases with an s, as in multiple) came open and when I unzipped my suitcase there were approximately 10,000 beads of different colors mixed together and just loose rolling around. So, now, when I get distracted for a minute, I sort some beads. I’m more likely to do it for 2 minutes than 20 and then I sit back down.
Perhaps you don’t have a daughter who possesses an unreasonable number of beads and a wish for revenge. A second option is this giant poster I found in my closet. It serves the same purpose of distracting me for 2 minutes when I stand up from my desk. After I’ve colored in one of the fish, I sit back down and get back to work.
Speaking of finding this poster, have you ever gone shopping in your closet? Or is that just a thing me and my friends do? That’s a topic for another post.
