[242] Where Did the Time Go? 3 Things That are Stealing Your Time

Have you ever looked up and wondered where the time went?

It may be because you're having so much fun. Or it may be due to some sneaky things stealing your time. Check out this episode to learn about the three significant time sucks stealing your time.

Wondering what those time sucks are? They are social media, TV, and email.

In this episode, I share some ways to prevent these things from stealing your time.

Links I mentioned in this episode:
Let's Get More Time Bundle: https://go.realhappymom.com/lets-get-more-time-2024-bundle/

Transcript

0:00

Have you ever been going through your day and looked up and just wondered, where did the time go? Well, I'll tell you, there are three things that are stealing your time and I want to help you avoid those things. So in this episode, we are going to be chatting about the three major time sucks that are stealing your time. In some ways to prevent them from stealing any more of your time. Hey there. My name is Tony Anne. I am the podcast host of the real happy mom podcast. The podcast for busy working moms who need help with time management and achieving their big goals without pulling their hair out. And in this episode, I am sharing a training with you from. The let's get more time. Virtual summit. This virtual summit happened in February of 2024. And I know that this particular training is going to be super helpful for you because you are going to see how you can easily get back hours in your day. From these three things that are stealing your time. Now if you miss let's get more time. 20, 24. You can get all other presentations as well as the live recordings. All for a low price of$30. If you use the link in the description. So if you enjoyed this episode and you want to check out the things that I mentioned, as far as some of the. Presentations from some of the other speakers. You'd definitely want to get your hands on this bundle. So there are. Several presentations that are going to cover three main topics, which are mindset, routines, and then tools. That are all going to help you with gaining at least four hours to your workweek. So if you want to get your hands on that, make sure you check out the link in the description so that you can get let's get more time. 20, 24 for the low price of$30. Now let's go ahead and jump on in to this training.

Toni-Ann: 1:51

So really quick let's jump into the three time sucks that I wanted to go over with you today that I really have found have stolen a lot of my time. And I don't want it to do it for you. So the first time suck that I wanted to share with you that I have found has been a real drain is email. So there was a study several years ago that says that out of a thousand workers they were spending an average of three hours a day emailing. In their email plus an additional two and a half hours per day on their personal email. So that adds up pretty quick. And one time I tracked how much time I was spending in my email and I am very embarrassed, but it was around that same mark. Like I was constantly going in and checking and checking and checking. So some ways that you can kind of cut back on the amount of time that you're spending inside of your inbox. If you find that, Oh, yeah, I am checking my email like 15 times a day, or I'm spending a lot of time in my personal email on the weekends or whatever it is. One thing to do, especially for personal email is just turning off the notifications. I know for work, sometimes we need the notifications depending on what type of work you do, but if you can turning off the notifications helps so that you're dinged at every single time a new email comes in. So that's number one solution. Number two is removing the app from your home screen. This is something that I had to do because I like had a habit. As soon as I picked up my phone, I unlock my phone, go to email, unlock my phone, go to email. Like it was just a habit. I always go to email. So the way that I stopped going into my inbox was removing the app from my home screen. And I, Now I have to like actually go into like search for it if I actually want to do it and you know, like, I don't want to be spending all this time. So I found that I don't spend as much time in emails once I removed the app off the home screen. So that's solution number two. Solution number three that I think is the really most effective is just planning out The time that you will spend in your email ahead of time. So I'm saying like, you know, every morning at 9 a. m. and 12 p. m. I'll check my email. So, you know, you have those set times that you're checking it. So you're not constantly in your inbox checking things over and over again. I think it is really super helpful. just to get in that habit so that you're not like those average workers spending five plus hours in your inbox each week or each day rather. So that's time suck. Number one, time suck. Number two is social media. I love social media. I think it's great. But we have found that a lot of people are spending quite a bit of time on there and it's really addicting, especially when TikTok came around. Like, man, like I've went down so many. Bunny holes and rabbit trails. And yeah, it, I spent a lot of time there. So going back to that one study I was talking about with email, they did a similar study about social media and they found that people were spending an average of, it says 142 minutes. a day on social media. And then the next year it rose up to almost three hours. And that was back in 2020. So it, I know 2020 was a interesting year and it was a lot that was happening. But still that's a lot of time to be spending on social media. So now we're finding that it is still around that two, three hour mark, depending on The ages that people are spending on social media each day. The people who created these different platforms are paid tremendous amounts of money to learn how to keep you on the platform. And they are very smart individuals and they learn how to do that. And one of the ways that keep you on the platform is notifications again. So solution number one to helping to decrease the amount of time that you spend on social media Is by turning those notifications off. I have had my notifications off for social media for a very long time. And I will tell you that has helped me not to constantly want to go inside of the, the app. So big one, like I said, turning off notifications or kind of customizing it so it's not like every single thing that happens on social media, you getting a notification for like, if it's just like someone responds to your comment or something that's actually important to you. Then you can do that. But I would say turn notifications off so that you're not constantly being dinged at. Same thing as the email. Another solution is just removing the app off your home screen. So it's not so easy for you to get access to the app and constantly be inside of the different apps there. And then again, having limits. I know with all the different phones now you can set limits on how Much time you're spending on the app, but I know for some people, even that is like not enough because even if you set a rule that you will only spend, like, let's just say an hour a day on social media and you've gotten to that hour, there is a way to unlock things and still be able to get inside of it. So the real way that I like had to break my habit of social media is deleting the app altogether off of my phone. I know that is extreme. But that is how I was able to do it and you know what once I deleted it like I lived like everything was fine like I felt like I was gonna miss out on things but it's fine it's totally fine it's it's a little rough the first go around but I promise you it gets easier so if you really really need help with getting off social media delete the app. for a day and then you can reinstall it back on there. Now moving on to the third time suck. The third one is television. So TV is, is one thing that yeah, I have my shows that I like and I can speak on this one. TV time is, is one that takes up quite a bit of time. And there is a study that said the average person in the U. S. is spending It says about, like, three hours a day watching television. Some were saying up to like four and five hours watching television because they're watching multiple shows and movies and things like that. TV is, is a tough one because it's so easy to turn it on and off, but some solutions for cutting down on the amount of time that you spend on TV is one being aware of it. And then two, limiting the amount of time that You will have to spend on TV. So saying like, you know, I'm only going to watch one episode of me. I like the circle. That's one of my favorite shows to watch on Netflix, the circle and love is blind. I just binge watch a couple of episodes of that, but I will tell myself like, you're only going to have. you know, be able to watch two episodes or one episode, whatever it is, so that I'm not just sitting there and watching the whole entire season in one sitting as much as I'd love to. That's not really a best use of time. And then two, another solution is substituting TV with other healthy habits. Whether that's you know, moving your body around the house, you know, instead of watching TV, maybe you are reading a book or listening to some educational podcast, whatever it is that you can substitute that in. is a healthier habit for you. I know a lot of times we want to unwind. And especially after a long day, that is one way to kind of help to have you unwind after a long day. But think about some other ways that you can substitute it. TV time at the end of the day. So just to recap, three major time sucks that we talked about today are email, social media, and television. So remember with email and social media to Decrease the amount of notifications that you're getting by turning those notifications off or removing the app completely off of your home screen or deleting the app completely from your phone. Those are ways to help with that. And then if you can use the timers that are set on there, I know Apple and even Android devices have where you can. Set a limit on how much time you're spending on different apps. But again, if you know how to get out of those things after you've reached the limit to have more time, like I said, delete the app. Just to make it so that you can't get back in there. And then TV, just remember to find different substitutes for it to see if Yeah, you can find something else that you can spend your time on and not get sucked into spending hours a day on television. So that's all I got for today. Hopefully that was helpful for you.

10:31

Now that's it for this episode. Again, if you want to get all of the presentations from let's get more time, 20, 24, make sure you use the link in the description so that you can get it for the low price of$30. I will be back again next week for another full episode, take care and with lots of laugh.