If you are feeling that you are wasting time, it is the right time to organize priorities, not time management.

Remember

Expanded perspective

No matter how much we try to stick to properly planning our day and getting most things done, there is still this feeling that we are wasting time. If you are feeling the same, you are not alone, most of us do. It has more to do with how we look at time and our priorities. Instead of time conspiring against us, the feeling has more to do with unmanaged priorities.

You have plans

You have plans for the day. By the end of the day, you are not able to get things done according to those plans. Now you don’t have much time left in the day and not enough energy to make yourself do anything at all, so you just end up watching something or doing something random and sleeping.

We all are guilty of planning and not keeping up with the plans. While planning and following through is really one of the best things you can do, but it is not an absolute essential. You can still get things done without much planning.

Even if you don’t have a properly planned day, you will still be able to get things done. Well, this is a counterproductive statement, “NOT HAVING A PLAN”, but the point is, you don’t have to feel too much pressure, if you don’t have a plan for the day, it is fine. Just to clarify, this doesn’t mean that you should not be planning your day. Plan your day, but if you find yourself in these thoughts about wasting time, skip planning for a few days in between.

Plans are rough

Plans are just “Plans”, they are just a rough outline of things, so don’t over plan. Don’t measure whatever you are doing by time.

Set some priorities and a clear set of tasks for yourself and get them done. Stop worrying too much about how much time you should be putting into your tasks or if you are giving them less time or you are completely wasting time.

Time is a finite resource and you will not be able to make up for time, but you don't have to worry too much about utilizing all the time you have. Click To Tweet

Even 15 mins in a day towards your dream project is a good utilization of time when the rest of your day is spent on tasks that are helping to earn money.

Wasting time

It will be difficult to keep track of what you are doing and how long it will take or is it going to finish at all or not. Although planning doesn’t guarantee success, it is still better to plan and follow through something. Having clarity about the next steps is important to stop you from falling into the habit of wasting time. Therefore, having things planned is helpful. You are reducing decision making when you are about to start something and it will help you reduce the amount of procrastination.

As soon as you find yourself off the plan there is this feeling that starts building up, telling you that you are wasting your time. While there is a lot of truth in that, but you don’t have to go down the rabbit hole and start worrying about it too much. It is ok to not follow through plans at times if you will come back to it later. If you don’t, you will start feeling worse about wasting time.

What matters to you?

If a relationship with a friend is important to you and she or he needs you in this phase of their life, that is time well spent.

Don’t manage time, manage the important things, and put time on them.

You don’t have to worry about how many hours you have in a day, worry about the things that you want to do in your day, and just do them. Don’t overthink that you need to put this many number of hours to consider it not wasting time.

It all adds up, even if you have just 5 minutes left in the day, just utilize that time, and you will have the first 5 minutes of the next day and if you still want to continue, you have 1435 minutes still left in the day.

Time is a concept that we have created, so make it work for you, don’t work for it.