Experts Say That In Order To Better Use Your Time, You Must Learn To Waste Time

You must learn the importance of wasting time. Then and only then, will you be able to use your time better.

That doesn’t make sense at all, right? Before you click the back button, let me try to explain this better.

The Feeling That You’re “Wasting Time”

Since young, you’re taught about the necessity of making the best use of your time. You’re told that in order to be successful, you need to make every minute count. Right?

So whenever you have some downtime, you feel guilty.

Maybe I should look for some new ideas for my career. Maybe I should check my email to see if the client replied. 

You have the urge to look through your emails. You’ll want to be productive.

So where does that leave you? It leaves you with the feeling that work never ends. And you’re accustomed to working almost 24/7.

So what? Isn’t that good?

I mean, working hard and all is good, right? Wrong.

Because you don’t have any downtime, and even if you have them, you’re unable to enjoy them properly. You’re not giving your brain enough rest and that affects your work life.

You’re not able to concentrate as well as you should be. You’re not able to get enough sleep. You’re not able to perform your best simply because you’re overworked.

Whenever you’re on social media searching for information, you’ll be searching for things to entertain yourself with at the same time.

Then you lose half an hour immersing in that brief moment of entertainment. So where does that lead you to?

OT, sometimes without pay. A workaholic who spends all his hours at the office but gets labelled as inefficient because the results don’t justify the hours put in.

So what can you do?

Well, here’s what the experts think: Switch your mindset. Don’t think of wasting time as unproductive. Think of it as something important and embrace it totally.

Work is never-ending. That bit is true, I’d admit. But what you can do to manage work is to give yourself deadlines because that’d ensure you keep to it.

The sad thing is, for most of us, we can complete our given tasks in a shorter amount of time. But we don’t because we’ll think, ah, still got time lah. I’ll take a short break.

Learn the importance of taking a break, a.k.a just wasting time and be unproductive, and you’ll find yourself making better use of your time.