How to Stop Wasting Time AND Improve Your Happiness!

Hi, I’m Paul Krismer, and I’m your happiness expert. This week’s video is all about saving time and growing our happiness. I mean, it sounds a little bit absurd, but we probably can all relate to these feelings like, “I’m run off my feet. I’m way over committed. I can’t catch my breath.” Do you ever hear yourself saying things like that? Well, it’s shitty, huh? You know, it feels crappy. The truth is that happiness is always found in the present moment. So, if we’re busy giving away our present moments to things that are potentially avoidable, that aren’t giving us much satisfaction, then that’s a really good place for us to look inside our lives and see what’s available. So, this video is all about avoiding time traps. Stay tuned.

As a coach, public speaker, and best-selling author, I teach topics just like this one all around the world. So stay tuned, and I’ll give you practical tools that you can use to make both yourself and those around you both happier and more successful. So, you run off your feet and you want more time, but what do you do? Well, you could read Ashley Whillans’s new book called “Time Smart”. I’ll give you a few highlights right here. She talks about the importance of avoiding time traps and they’re really understandable when you hear them out loud. So, let’s look at these six time traps.

The first one is simply undervaluing time. It’s this idea that we don’t recognize that our happiness is completely tied to how we invest our time. So, if happiness is the potential that is found in time, then we need to think very carefully about how we use our time. So, that’s the first one: stop undervaluing your time.

The second one, look big picture, lifestyle-oriented. Think, for example, your commute to work. We see lots of great research that show the commute itself is associated with low mood and that low mood then extends into the activities that immediately follow the commute. So, when you first arrive at work after a lousy long commute, you’re down. And when you come home after a long commute, you’re also feeling down. So, consider big picture items in your life about how you could make adjustments to continually create more time. Do you need to clean a 3,000 square foot home, or would a 2,000 square foot home be much better? Those are the kind of things we’re talking about in terms of big picture, big decisions in your life.

Thirdly, consider what Ashley calls this “yes, damn” effect. This is this idea that you’ll commit to something, you’ll give away a “yes”. “Oh yeah, sure, I’ll do that. I’ll help you with this. I’ll do this,” with some mistaken belief in the back of your head that you’ll have more free time later. “I’m busy today, but yes, I can help you with a PTA meeting or whatever down the road.” There’s this belief that we will be better capable of managing that commitment sometime in the future because the future always looks better. And she calls that the “yes, damn” effect because they say “yes”, and then “damn, I shouldn’t have done that.” Don’t do that.

Fourth, people are uncomfortable with their own idleness. That’s a big issue in our society today where we can be entertained constantly from all kinds of directions. Technology is a big part of that. But then, when we kind of have this free moment, we look to fill it right away because we’re uncomfortable. We’re not confident that we can be happy in the present moment. And if we could pause for a little while, then rather than jumping on technology, we might decide, “Oh, you know what, I don’t mind going for a bike ride,” or, “There’s some puttering I’d like to do in the garden.” And those activities, even though they take just a tiny bit more initiation, motivation, there’s a barrier to get over to get to them, it’s not really easy, but once you start puttering in the garden or going for your bike ride, your happiness will be much greater than if you were to spend some time scrolling on social media.

And number five, social media itself. It’s all kinds of great research showing that as we scroll, the longer we spend doing it, the more unhappy we get. We’re busy comparing our lives to others or reading media that brings us down or just simply wasting time. And it gets to us. So, be very, very careful of that time trap that I think is so common that in my pocket, I have instant entertainment all the time, and it doesn’t make me happier.

And then, finally, number six, it’s this idea of busyness as status. This is hugely problematic. Our society is so much about accomplishing things so that we can acquire things and our busy work lives. And since I’m moving to the United States, I’m seeing it even more extreme than it was in Canada, that people are just invested all the time in being productive and showing themselves to be people that are being productive. So, this busyness that is associated with my self-esteem because I want other people to see me as important because I’m busy, it’s a fool’s errand. Think very seriously about how you really want to come across to the world, or how the world’s opinion of you doesn’t really matter.

Now, look, there’s six suggestions to avoid time traps. You can’t invent more time. We all have the same amount. So, we really have to look at it as a precious resource and avoid priorities that, in fact, don’t give us much happiness, and that means re-prioritizing things that do. If you can avoid these time traps I’ve talked about today, then you can take that newly found time as the precious resource that it is and invest it in things that actually matter, things like personal growth or your health, or maybe even better, in the social relationships that deeply matter to you. Hey, if you like this kind of content, click the like button, subscribe to my channel. You get a new video every Sunday morning, and share this content with the people that you think it’s valuable for. Thanks so much for watching. We’ll see you next time.