2.5% is a lot to give up

Today I was working and my friend called me. We chatted for 20 minutes and had a nice time. After the call I went to the bathroom, got a snack, checked social media, and otherwise got distracted. Before I knew it, it had been an hour before I got back to focused work. 

One hour is 2.5% of a 40-hour work week. This seems like a sizable chunk to give up. You wouldn’t pay Instagram 2.5% of your monthly income, would you? You wouldn’t give a neighbor 2.5% of your front yard. You wouldn’t want to lose 2.5% of your hair, right? 

These rogue hours add up over the course of a week. 30 minutes here and 30 minutes there can easily add up to five hours per week, or 12.5% of your working time. 

If you have a job you hate, maybe you’re not worried about a few wasted hours. But if you have creative ambitions like most of the people who read this blog, these hours show us what we’re missing. We’d all gladly accept six weeks off to work on a creative project. Like that would ever happen, right? But we give up the same number of hours annually, one hour at a time. 

Time is the only resource you can’t make more of and you can’t get back. Let’s be more vigilant in protecting it. 

P.S. In light of this, I’ve recently started using ScreenZen for my phone and my desktop. It’s free. It makes me do mental math problems before accessing distracting apps and websites. It’s really been working for me because I hate math.