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There are lots of books, programs, and schemes out there promising big results.
Eat this, and you’ll lose the weight!
Drink this, and you’ll have more energy!
Buy this, and it will change your world!
But results are only as good as your resolve, and sometimes it’s hard to trade off something that feels really good, even if in the end it isn’t so very good for us.
I think we all have black holes in our lives—little (or not so little!) time sucks of pleasure here or there. It feels so good to escape into these zones of happiness, but in the end it might not be so good for us. The biggest harm, in my opinion, isn’t the negative side effects our own personal “lost time zone” might have, but what it stops us from doing.
Television is the biggest one that comes to mind. I’m guessing many of us have tamed the TV, but the average American spends 4 hours a day, 28 hours a week, two complete months a year watching television. What could you do with that extra time?
My biggest time suck is the computer. In my mind, it’s marginally better than television because even though it’s a screen, hey, at least I’m interacting with other people! This is, of course, complete and utter bupkis and deep down I know it. My time would be much better spent enriching my own home and enjoying my children than it would be spent looking at memes and cruising Facebook. And I’m not even going to put in bold how much time I spend online every day.
For us OCD-types, we sometimes get mired down in planning. We spend so much time trying to plan the perfect plan that we never actually get around to the act of doing. Time suck!
Today I would encourage you to be great big loser. Look around in your life and see where your time is getting sucked away. Are you happy with that? It’s not an all-or-nothing proposition, but perhaps you and your family would be better served if you could limit time spent on less rewarding pursuits. You can do it!
Where do you get mired down? What could you gain if you lost the time suck?
