A Simple Guide to Avoiding Waste of Time

The universal currency of the world is… work time. Everyone knows how the saying goes – time is money. So why do we keep forgetting about it? How many hours a day are you engage in activities which bring you no benefits. How much time do you spend on self-development? How much time do you spend on a family or strengthening the bonds with those you love? Are you even able to count it?

Waste of Time – What Is It?

You should begin by asking yourself the question: Do I properly define the ‘waste of time’? Is spending 15 minutes a day on planning how you’re going to spend your day a waste of time – of course not. Is allocating an hour of your time on mind’s relaxation a waste of time? Not if you need it. Not if your interests contribute to your development. Is spending time on dinner and having fun with your family, friends a waste of time? Not if you found your work balance. So what about giving your body rest while having 8 hours of sleep? Is it a waste of time? Of course not because it is good for your health.

Alright, but these activities consist 50-70% of our day. So what about the other percentage of the time?

Compare Your Time to Money

Let’s say that the unit of time measurement is not a minute but a specific amount of money, for example, $1. If you look at your time from this perspective, you will be able to price your time. Imagine that every day you save 20 minutes, which makes $20. After one year you saved $7300 which is 120 hours. So if you could choose whether you want to get the money or saved time, you would probably choose the money. And that’s a mistake. You should consider the fact that you can get the money back if you lose it. But time goes in one direction and there is no method to get it back. Also, think how many times you have regretted spending a few extra dollars. Now, correlate it with how often you have regretted that you wasted several minutes on watching tv or scrolling down Facebook.

Time in Enterprise

Finally, think about your life as about enterprise. Every entrepreneur is interested in the information on what and how much time his employees spend on performing tasks (this is where TimeCamp can be useful as it compares time to money).  Assuming that an employee receives the same salary every month and works the same number of hours, an entrepreneur wants to be aware of how much time he wastes on employee’s idleness, who doesn’t accomplish his tasks or doesn’t have them set currently.

For this reason, large corporations regulate the number of employed staff or even employees on a shift – in order to optimize the work time spent on idle activities.

To Sum Up

Start thinking about your time as something that is palpable. Just as you think about money. Otherwise, you will keep making the same mistakes and waste your time on tasks and activities which don’t bring any positive change into your life as well as benefit in your work.