Avoid These 21 Massive Time Wasters and Do This Instead

Time is money. 

How much do you waste?

It’s hard to quantify how much time we waste each week, but we can identify the biggest time wasters and reduce their impact on our lives. 

Discover 21 of the biggest time wasters at home and work with tips for avoiding them. 

The Biggest Time Wasters

Life abounds with ways to waste time. That’s good news if you have time to kill, but usually, we find ourselves procrastinating when we should focus on getting stuff done. 

Though many experts focus on avoiding time wasters at work, most of us (me included) need to stop wasting time at home too. 

Here we highlight the biggest time sucks both inside and outside the office. Avoid them and spend your time thriving instead!

Biggest Time Wasters at Home

We should be able to waste time when we’re relaxing at home, right?

Not if we want to live happy lives. 

There’s a massive difference between time wasted and time spent enjoying life. If you’re happy spending time on any of these activities, keep doing them! But if you know you’re wasting time and have better things to do, we’ll help you stop. 

Social Media

How many hours per day do you spend on your phone?

What are you doing there?

How many hours do you waste on Facebook, TikTok, Reddit, X, or Instagram, mindlessly scrolling through random content for no real reason?

I’ve wasted countless hours browsing the front page of Reddit, reading random stories from people I don’t care about, watching adorable animal gifs, and laughing at the jokes. 

It’s a mindless escape, letting us disengage from reality for a while, but it’s also a trap preventing us from doing all the things we enjoy. 

What To Do Instead

Ask yourself why you’re so focused on your favorite social media platform. What makes you keep coming back?

Is it the dopamine rush of new notifications? Turn them off. Does your brain need something to focus on? Read a book. Do you want to keep up with certain people? Set up a block of time for engaging, then put your phone away so you’re not tempted to keep scrolling. 

Doomscrolling

Doomscrolling is a unique form of internet use that keeps us plastered to the screen, scouring the headlines for the next shoe to drop. 

The anxiety-inducing activity keeps us hooked. Putting the phone down feels impossible, as we’re constantly on edge waiting for the next new horror to appear. 

What To Do Instead

Although it’s crucial to stay informed about what’s happening in the world, you must also live your life. 

Doomscrolling steals precious time you could use to engage with family, care for yourself, or enjoy a hobby. 

To avoid it, set time limits for news programming. Dedicate 30 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes in the evening for discovering the new horrors, then put your phone away. 

Nothing will change if you find out what happened tomorrow morning instead of at 11 PM. 

Internet Fighting

The idealism of wanting to change hearts and minds shouldn’t be dismissed, but arguing on the internet isn’t the way to do it. 

You’re wasting your time trying to get someone to see the light who doesn’t want to see it. You’re also wasting your precious mental energy and putting yourself in a bad mood. 

What To Do Instead

As they say, don’t feed the trolls. Most people online aren’t arguing in good faith, so why are you bothering?

If you’re passionate about a topic, join a volunteer organization dedicated to the mission, or start your own content page supporting it. 

Ignore the people who want to argue and focus on spreading your message. You will impact more people than you know. 

Television

The average American spends nearly four hours a day watching TV. That’s 28 hours per week, more than an entire day! 

What are you really getting from it?

I understand we enjoy our favorite shows. There’s nothing wrong with cuddling up with our favorite characters for a few hours per week to veg out and close down our minds. 

But four hours a day is a lot. It’s a massive time waster. 

What To Do Instead

How much television are you watching because you love the show, and how much are you watching because there’s nothing else to do?

The first step to cutting back on television is deciding which shows are worth your time. Make a list of the few series you absolutely want to catch. Allow yourself to enjoy them. 

Next, stop watching random junk because it’s on and you have nothing better to do. There’s always something better to do. You could read a book, draw a scene from your room, catch up on chores, learn a new skill, engage in a hobby, or play with your cat. 

If you’re struggling to disconnect, either set a time limit or use television as a reward for accomplishing a goal. 

My husband and I stopped watching television this year, and it’s a lot easier than I thought. I’m reading more, playing chase games with my cat, and learning calculus instead – all activities that are far more valuable than zoning out in front of a television screen. 

Cooking

How much time did you spend making breakfast, lunch, and dinner?

We need to eat, but we often waste a lot of time deciding what to make for dinner and preparing everything at the last minute. 

Although food is a necessity, some of that time is wasted, and you can claw a good portion of it back. 

What To Do Instead

Make a weekly meal plan to avoid wasting time in the kitchen. Dedicate a few hours each week to prepping your meals: make your grocery list, get all the stuff you will need, pre-chop your veggies, and separate your meats. 

Allow yourself a few quick, easy meals so you don’t have to cook every day. Grab a few frozen pizzas or some sandwich fixings. Plan a few crock pot meals ahead of time so you can come home and serve a hot, delicious meal. 

Your advanced preparations will save you precious time during the busy week. 

Snacking

How much time did you spend this week opening and closing the refrigerator looking for something you couldn’t specify? Were you really hungry, or were you looking for something to do?

A lot of us snack to kill time when we’re bored. It’s a massive time waster that’s also bad for our wallets and waistlines. 

What To Do Instead

The first thing you should do if you feel like snacking is drink a glass of water. Many of us confuse thirst for hunger, and you’ll often find the water satiated your craving. 

Next, you should identify what you’re really after. Why are you looking for a snack? Did you get up because you were bored? 

Try doing something productive, like a hobby, working out, or even doing chores. 

If you desire snacks because you’re actually hungry, create healthy snack packs during your weekly meal prep sessions. Make sure you always have something quick and easy available to eat, so you don’t waste all that time searching and preparing. 

Gaming

Full disclosure: I love video games. I’ve put countless hours into my favorites, like Tears of the Kingdom, Diablo, and all the old-school Nintendo games. 

Gaming is a legitimate hobby and a great way to spend time. 

But, if you’re not careful, it can turn into your entire life, becoming a giant time suck. 

Some people’s gaming obsessions prevent them from living. They’d rather spend time in an online fantasy world than in real life engaging. 

Like anything, you must have balance. 

What To Do Instead

If gaming becomes your life, you must pull away. 

Set time limits, only allowing yourself to play for a few hours each day. Make it a weekend activity instead of a daily activity. 

Alternatively, you can make your game a reward for a productive day. You get to play after you’ve achieved certain goals and finished specific tasks. You’ll want to do the work because you know you have an epic battle waiting when you’re done. 

If you’re addicted to phone games like Candy Crush, the only cure is putting your phone away. Games like that are an endless waste of time. You can’t beat them, but they keep sucking you back in. 

Put your phone away and pay attention to anything else. 

Causal Shopping

Casual shopping wastes both money and time. Why are you strolling through aisles of endless products when you don’t need anything?

The endless scrolling through online sales platforms is just as meaningless. The time could be better spent anywhere else. 

What To Do Instead

If you’re shopping as a social activity, pick something more engaging instead, like mini-golf, bowling, or a coffee date. You’ll spend less money, and have more time for what really matters: enjoying the relationship. 

If you shop on your own to kill time, consider other activities that get you out of the house. Go for a walk or hike, or check out a local museum or art gallery. These activities are similar to shopping, but you won’t waste as much money and you’ll feel like you did something. 

Distractions

Our lives burst with distractions, and they eat away precious seconds every day. 

Every phone notification, knock on your door, flashy light, and buzz of activity takes time away from what you want to be doing. Even our own physical needs become distractions, like having to stop for the bathroom or feeling hungry. 

How to Stop Distractions from Wasting Time

It’s nearly impossible to prevent every distraction from taking you away from what you want to be doing, but you can mitigate them. 

First, take care of your physical needs before starting something. Next, put your phone away and turn off all electronics. 

Family Distractions

If you’re distractions come in the form of people in the house you must care for, try to meet all of their needs before starting a project. 

When the kids are little, work with your partner to ensure you can both enjoy time along to focus on your goals. If the kids are old enough to be left unattended, teach them the value of quiet time. Set boundaries with them, and force them to find something to do on their own while you’re working. 

Chores

Chores destroy our free time. There’s always something to do around the house, like laundry, dishes, or vacuuming. It never ends. 

If we let them, chores will become our entire lives, wasting every second of free time we have. 

What To Do Instead

Don’t let chores become your life. Create a routine with a maximum chore time each day. Build in free time for hobbies and productivity. 

Set a few hours each week to deep clean, so you’re not doing it every day. Enlist your partner and children to help where they can, so it doesn’t all fall on you. 

It’s vital to remember, your house doesn’t have to be perfectly clean all the time. Let the towels sit in the laundry basket. Mop the floor once a week instead of every day. Make easy meals with quick clean-up times. 

Stop wasting your time aiming for perfection. 

People You Don’t Want to Deal With

One of life’s biggest time wasters is all the people you don’t want to engage with. They’re family members, friends of friends, pesky coworkers, and busy-body neighbors. 

We’re often forced to interact with these folks, but you don’t have to let them waste more of your time than necessary. 

How to Avoid Wasting Time on People You Don’t Enjoy

Stop hanging out with people you don’t want to hang out with and stop engaging with people at parties you don’t enjoy talking to. It’s okay to say “no” to invitations and engagements you don’t want to participate in. 

When at an event, politely excuse yourself for a drink or to say hi to someone else. You don’t need to trap yourself in a conversation with someone. 

Of course, you must use some common sense. Sometimes you must see your in-laws because it’s important to your spouse or engage with your kid’s best friend’s parents. 

However, you can set boundaries and ensure they aren’t taking too much of your precious time. 

Things You Do Because You Feel Obligated

How often do you do something you don’t want to do because someone asked you, and you felt bad saying no? 

Why are you doing it?

My mom used to have a coworker who constantly asked for help with household tasks after hours. My mom, being the saint that she is, always said yes. But this woman never returned the favor and constantly complained about how my mom helped her. 

My mom asked me what to do. I told her to say no to helping. This woman wasn’t her friend, she was using my mom’s kindness against her. 

A lot of us fall into the trap of wanting to help someone, so we say yes to things we’d rather not do out of a weird sense of obligation. 

What To Do Instead

It’s time to set boundaries and be clear about what you will and won’t do. Stop letting others pressure you into things you don’t want to do. Stop helping people who refuse to help you in return. 

I’m not advocating to never help anyone out. Friends help each other. Friends do things for each other they don’t enjoy, that’s part of the give and take of friendship that helps build meaningful relationships. 

However, it’s crucial to learn the difference between being there for a friend and being a doormat. 

Helping a friend is never wasted time. Letting a user pressure you into constantly helping them and getting nothing in return probably is. 

If you’re doing something out of guilt or feeling pressured, examine whether the relationship is worth your time. What are you getting out of it, other than wasted time and hurt feelings?

Things You Do Because Everyone Else Is

Nobody wants to feel left out of a group activity. But do you really need to do everything your friends are doing?

We all don’t enjoy the same activities, and that’s okay. You don’t need to attend every get-together. 

If you want to go to hang out and know it will make you happy, by all means, go! But if you’re dreading, why commit? It’s a waste of your time and theirs, as your misery will drain the enjoyment from the activity. 

What to Do Instead

It’s time to realize that you don’t have to do everything everyone else is doing all the time. 

Pass on the activities that you don’t enjoy. 

You don’t have to be rude about it. When my friends plan a shopping trip I have no interest in attending, I just say “Thanks for the invite, but I’ll pass this time.” 

Then, I’ll plan something for a different day that suits my interests, and respond graciously if one of them isn’t interested. 

Of course, friendships are give and take, and sometimes you should do things you don’t fully enjoy to engage with the people that matter most. It’s all about finding that balance between time wasted, and time spent building relationships. 

Is it Really Wasting Time?

Nothing is a waste of time if it makes you happy. 

Spend your free time gaming, watching television, shopping, and doing anything else if you’re thriving. 

As long as you’re adulting properly (meeting deadlines, working, getting chores done, and doing what your family needs to thrive) spend your free time however you like. 

There’s no shame in enjoying any of the hobbies listed above, and there’s nothing wrong with spending your free time binge-watching your favorite show or playing your favorite games. 

However, many people waste time on these activities, when they could be doing something else, something they really want to do. 

Only you can decide if your television use or shopping habit is a waste of time. If it’s preventing you from achieving your life goals, it might be. But if you’re thriving and love your life, then it’s probably not. 

The Biggest Time Wasters at Work

Work itself is sometimes a waste of time. Why must we be chained to a desk for forty hours a week when we could be doing anything else?

Of course, we need to work to make money to survive, so it’s not truly time wasted. But there are a lot of time wasters at work we need to avoid to enhance productivity on the job. 

Discover the biggest culprits and the best tips to avoid them!

Endless Meetings

Although some meetings have value, many seem pointless. We’re stuck in these endless conversations where people drone on about stuff that has no bearing on our jobs.

How to Prevent Endless Meetings from Wasting Your Time

If you truly get no value from the meeting, ask your boss if you can skip it. Go into the meeting prepared – let them know why it’s not meaningful for you and what you can accomplish instead. 

Sometimes, they will see your point, and you’ll be excused. 

If your boss says you have to go, remember that it’s not truly wasted time because at least you’re getting paid. If the meeting is online, you can multi-task to meet crucial deadlines. 

Distracting Coworkers

Imagine you just sat down at your work computer to focus on your report. Your energy levels are high, you are focused, and you are ready to get stuff done!

Then Mr. Gossip Face peeps into your office;  a most unwelcome interruption. He wants to talk about the latest workspace gossip, the rumor mill, and what Bill and Susy might have said about him the other day. 

Mr. Gossip Face is a time waster. 

How to Avoid Distracting Coworkers

Although we’d love to tell Mr. Gossip Face to get bent, we can’t. We must remain professional at work. 

Instead, tell him politely that you’re really busy and need to get work done. Give him a time when he can come back to chat. 

 If that doesn’t work, stand up and walk him out of the office. 

It’s okay to be polite yet firm in setting boundaries with coworkers and ensuring they know you need to focus on your work. 

Interruptions

Busy-body coworkers aren’t the only interruptions you face at work. The office bursts with activity, from phone calls to emails, meeting notifications, and all the other random stuff that pops up each day. 

These interruptions can destroy our focus and waste our time. 

Prevent Interruptions from Wasting Time

To avoid interruptions from coworkers, close your office door if you have one, or wear headphones. People will think you can’t hear them, so they’re less likely to bother you. 

If you really need to focus, put a “do-not-disturb” setting on your email and messaging app. You won’t get alerted to new notifications, avoiding the distracting interruption. 

Busy Work

Busy work wastes so much time. It increases our workloads and prevents us from focusing on crucial tasks. 

And it’s never-ending. 

We can’t define busy work because it’s different for every industry, but most people will know exactly how it applies to them. The endless task list makes achieving any major goals nearly impossible. 

Avoiding Busy Work

The best way to avoid busy work is via delegation. Give it to a junior team member. If you’re a supervisor, ask one of your employees to do the work. 

Delegating these tasks not only gets them off your plate but also offers vital developmental opportunities for others. What seems like busy work to you could be an opportunity for them to learn new skills. 

When you can’t delegate, try time blocking instead. This time management tool helps you focus on a specific task for an allotted period. You can set two hours aside for busy work. When you’re done, you will have freed up the rest of your day to focus on more important projects. 

If all else fails, make a list. Although it won’t reduce your workload, it will help you set goals and prioritize your most crucial tasks. 

Perfectionism

You must stop wasting time trying to make things perfect. Perfection does not exist. You will never achieve anything if you refuse to submit it unless it’s “perfect.”

Instead, you will flounder, constantly making minor tweaks and never finishing. 

What To Do Instead

Embrace imperfection. Settle for “good enough.”

If that’s impossible, set deadlines. Commit to submitting your final project on Friday at noon, no matter what. 

Your boss may have edits, and that’s okay. Those mistakes will help you learn and do better next time. But if you never turn them in, you’ll never have that opportunity for growth. 

Procrastination

Work always comes with something we dread doing. So instead of doing that awful thing, we put it off, focusing our attention on anything else so we don’t have to face it. 

Although our minds trick us into believing it’s fine because we’re getting something else done, its really a massive waste of time, because we can’t really focus on the other stuff when that big task keeps hanging over our heads. 

How To Stop Procrastinating

It’s time to face your fear. Put that dreaded task at the very top of your to-do list, and get it out of the way. 

Placing the dreaded thing first is the crucial point of the best-selling productivity book Eat that Frog, which teaches you that completing the worst thing you have to do first will make the rest of the day far easier. 

You’ll feel better after the pressure is off, and you’ll be able to accomplish more. 

Multitasking

We advised you to multitask during meetings, but that’s only when the meeting is pointless and you don’t have to pay attention. 

Most of the time, multitasking wastes time. 

It doesn’t seem like – it feels like we’re getting more done. But what are we really accomplishing?

We’re wasting precious seconds switching our focus from one task to the next, and we often do both tasks poorly because our attention is divided between the two. 

How to Stop Multi-Tasking

In many industries, multi-tasking seems vital. We have projects to complete, but we must also be responsive to emails and phone calls. 

To stop multi-tasking, focus on your primary role. Unless your job is customer service, the phone calls and emails can wait. 

Use time blocking to set specific time frames for responding to calls and emails. Carve out uninterrupted time to focus on your essential projects. 

Planning

Those who fail to plan, plan to fail. But far too many people fall into the trap of overplanning. 

If you never stop planning, you never act, and you’ll never accomplish anything. 

It’s a tricky time waster because it feels like you’re accomplishing something, but in reality, you’re putting off action. 

What To Do Instead

While planning is essential, it’s also crucial to have a stopping point where your plan turns into action. Use a project outline tool to set deadlines and due dates. Add action items into your plan, and focus on task accomplishment. 

Sometimes, you will have to go with an imperfect plan, and that’s okay. Take action and see what happens. You’ll always be able to change course later if something doesn’t work out. 

Stop Wasting Time and Start Getting Stuff Done!

Now that you’ve identified the biggest time wasters, you can avoid them and get more done in your life. 

You’ll be shocked at how much your productivity skyrockets when you stop wasting vital time!