6 Hours, 11 Minutes of Garbage

For years, I've talked about the incredible value of time, especially time well spent, and the dangers of time wasted. I've also written about and given presentations to teams about how to maximize time, to use it effectively, and how to accomplish a lot with very little.

I thought I was doing a good job with avoiding the habits that drag productivity and relationships down. I don't own a television, I rejoice in tasks identified (and tasks completed), and I try to give my attention to the things that matter.

Two weeks ago, I was anything but these things.

Thanks to the valuable "Screen Time" function on my iPhone, I know exactly how much time I spent doing things that were, let's say, less than value adding.

Between August 4 and August 11, I spent an average of 6 hours and 11 minutes with my cell phone, for a grand total of 43 hours and 17 minutes.

This is ghastly.

Surely, some of that must be taken up with productive things, right?

I can justifiably subtract screen time for Waze, Messages, Spotify, Outlook, Teams, GameChanger, and a few other apps that I used for work or legitimate purposes....but not much. Only 9.5 hours.

That leaves me with nearly 34 hours of Facebook, Instagram, other social media, and internet browsing. That's an average of nearly 5 hours per day I am appalled by this, and you should be too.

Maybe you're like me, and after a long day, you just want to put your feet up and scroll through amusing reels to send to people. It's the modern version of flopping down in the recliner and letting mindless television wash over you each night for a few hours before slogging off to restless sleep and repeating again the next day.

Looking into the numbers even more, it wasn't that I was spending long hours in one stretch. That leads me to the other number that jumped out at me.

82.

That's how many times, on average throughout the week, I picked up my phone during the day. That's about once every six minutes. Divide the minutes by pickups and you learn that I spent about 3.5 minutes per pickup on the phone. Yuck.

I also noticed that I tended to pick up my phone within minutes of rising from bed, and stopped using the phone within minutes of going to bed. Everyone knows that's not a good recipe for success either. There are plenty of studies that have found negative impacts on sleep and wellness caused by cell phone usage surrounding our sleep cycles.

Thinking back to my MBA student days, I had to budget every minute of the day. I loved that. A 60-minute lunch break turned into a speed eating session in the elevator (lunch completed each day in 7 minutes) followed by 50 high impact minutes studying. A 45-minute commute each way was a second chance to listen to pre-recorded lectures. Like many people, I am most effective when my time is more precious. When I'm less busy, I tend to get less done.

It's a strange variation of Parkinson's Law: where work always expands to fill the time given. That idea, coupled with Michael Hyatt's phrase "What gets scheduled, gets done." paint a grim picture for my time during the week in question.

So, what to do?

The number one thing is to limit use of my cell phone. I cannot allow it to be in my bedroom at all, and I'm working to stop using it after a certain time of night. I also want to avoid it as much as possible in the morning, if I can. I've had a cell phone for nearly 25 years. I certainly haven't always allowed it to be so prevalent in my life.

Secondly, there are plenty of things I can be doing with 4 spare minutes here or there., especially when working from home. I've started to work on developing a hit list of short, high-value tasks that I can accomplish during the day when I have time or in the evenings when I can move away from my office. This is a much smaller scale version of what Beau Miles did in this video with a 24-hour day. If you haven't watched it, trust me. This is 17 minutes of YouTube that's worth it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvT5XS7j-Dc&t=27s

I sat down to capture all of this for three reasons. The first is accountability. Now it's out there, and I am compelled to waste less time. I want to write a follow up post to this declaring my triumphant return to the ranks of the super-productive.

The second is to encourage you to take a look at how you're spending your time and see if there's potential for improving your life by improving the quality of your time spent. Are you like me? Are you struggling with this also?

The third reason is to solicit feedback and suggestion. What works for you? How have you addressed this problem in the past, or now?

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