7 Unproductive Things People Do Everyday

That you’d never notice.

My brain rattled — it felt like my head had been put through a windshield as I laid on my couch in silence.

Depression overtook my mind and I couldn’t function right for the rest of the day. Well, I decided to write this, so that’s something right? But too often, we get into these random spurts of laziness.

It doesn’t have to be a clear-cut laziness like laying on your couch all day like I did. Sometimes we can be unproductive in our daily lives without knowing it.

Here are 7 unproductive things people do every day.

1. Eat snacks for no reason.

Look, I love food so go easy on me.

It’s hard for me to let go of my Kit-Kats and barbecue chips. I usually take a couple of snack times throughout the day, not counting three whole meals. Each snack time takes ten minutes while I search through my Twitter feed on my phone.

Twenty minutes of my day wasted all because I couldn’t force my ass to do something else. Like writing a journal entry.

Think of it like that, eating snacks takes away a journal entry of your time. Unless you want to write about snacks in your journal.

If you really need a snack. Make sure you’re eating it because you’re on the verge of starvation and you need the energy to do work.

2. Get into arguments.

I dwell too much on arguments.

Maybe that’s the pettiness inside me, but trust me it’s not worth it. Once you get into an argument with someone, it’s like an ongoing saga of who can make the best comeback and it doesn’t stop. So that’s how many minutes wasted on that argument? Thirty.

Thirty whole minutes wasted on a pointless argument you could’ve avoided by taking the L on the comeback and leaving the situation alone.

In those thirty minutes, I could’ve written not one, but two answers on Quora. Damnit.

If you’re going to get into an argument, take the L sooner than you expected, ignore them, and get back to work.

3. Take naps.

I’ve been surfing the mental health/mediation/stress-relief wave lately.

I’m zen. Sweet tea, yoga (that I barely do), not thinking too much, ti-di shirts, and throwing up peace signs. All jokes aside, I adopted a nap method of stress relief in college. If you’ve ever been to college, you know what I mean. You can’t survive college unless you take about two or more naps a day.

It helped me, but now that college is out for the summer, I’m taking unnecessary naps. And once I’m out, I’m out like a light (insert Sicko Mode song here).

That’s one hour of the day wasted on sleep.

In that hour, I could’ve written a 500-word or more blog post. Huh….I’m letting it sink in.

If you’re going to take a nap, take it because you’ll fall asleep at the wheel driving unless you have one.

4. Call people for a long time.

I only get facetime calls from family, especially at night.

Most of the time, it’s just a check-in to see how I’m doing. But at night, it’s a whole different story. We spend hours on end talking about pointless subjects and fucking around. We do this for such a long time every night that my sister has famously named those calls, the family call.

Great, more family calls to look forward too. *Awkwardly smiles*

Those take at least two hours. In those two hours, well, I could’ve gotten gas, went to Walmart, and wrote a 500-word blog post.

But those calls lift my spirits so sometimes I’ll let them slide.

If you know you’ll be on the phone for a long time, get your work done before the call happens.

5. Spend money on things you don’t need.

I’ll admit it, half of the stuff I have right now, I don’t need.

You do too. You beg and plead your family to get something you’ve been waiting all year for and once they finally buy it for you, it’s not as cool as you thought. Then you realize, you probably wasted someone’s money.

How many times did you think about that item you wanted? Probably every day until Christmas came.

For me, I only spent around ten minutes a day on average thinking about these new headphones I wanted for a solid nine months.

Do the math and that’s about five hours total I thought about those headphones. In those five hours, I could’ve worked out, eaten breakfast and lunch, wrote two Quora answers, wrote two blog posts, and wrote a journal entry.

If you’re going to spend money, make sure it’s something you truly desire rather than something to masturbate with for the moment.

6. Imagine success.

Since we’re on the subject of imagining things, think about how many times you’ve imagined success. Those items you imagine pale in comparison to the dreams you’ve had ever since you were a child and the goals you want to accomplish.

This feeling is multiplied when you’re at the bottom. You’re hungry for success so much that you think about it for hours every day. Hell, you dream about it every time you take a nap.

I’ve thought about success more and more ever since I got into college. Not to mention those times in high school.

That’s how many hours? Don’t be scared here, but that’s at least 1,000 hours. In those 1,000 hours of imagining success, I could’ve had a six-figure business by now.

If you’re going to imagine success, at least do an hour of work afterward.

7. Asking people to do things for you.

This can be your best friend and your worst nightmare when it comes to productivity. If you’re asking someone for help because you genuinely need someone who has the right skill set to get the task done, that’s completely valid.

But if you’re asking someone to be your butler for a day and cook all your meals, carry your bags, and wipe your ass while they’re at it, that defeats the purpose of asking for help.

Would you rather attain your success by having personal assistants or by building it with your own bare hands? The latter sounds more fruitful to me.

How much time is that? That’s 2,000 hours per year. In those 2,000 hours, I could’ve become the next Seth Godin, wrote thousands of blog posts, wrote a few books, wrote thousands of Quora answers, filled up fifty journals, and got some gas while I’m at it.

Hmph.

If you’re going to use a personal maid service for the day, at least do something nice for maid, unless you want bad karma.

Final Thought

There are unproductive things we do occasionally that kill our progress and there are unproductive things we do daily without batting an eyelash because we’re so used to them.

These are things we can’t help and we’ll most likely do anyway. But what we can do is make sure we’re hyper-aware of these actions and make them count towards our productivity.

Look at all the time we wasted in this article. I’m afraid we’ve put the clock in a coma. Now it’s on life support.

Please give it a break and treat your day like it’s your last. Only then, will you truly be productive.