The Ugly Truth About Wasting Time

 

Image by Holger Stephan from Pixabay

I find that some days start off great and keep going. 

I bound out of bed as soon as the alarm goes off at 6am, and by 7.30 I’m washed, dressed, the bed is made, breakfast is over, and the dishes are washed and put away.

Days that start like that, tend to keep going.

Yet there’s other days when I roll over in bed, fall back asleep, get up late, and knuckle-drag throughout the whole day, not feeling like doing much, and not getting much done.

Those are bad days because I achieve so little and all day I feel like I’m not only wasting time but wasting the whole day.

And one thing I know for sure is that wasting time never makes me feel good. It makes me feel bad, and that bad feeling follows me throughout the day.

Time wasted, makes me feel bad because I know I’m wasting my life. After all, time is all we really have.

Thankfully, those types of day don’t happen very often, and thank goodness for that because they are really depressing.

Yet there are people I know who spend their whole lives like that.

They spend every day doing nothing much of anything. And they say it’s because they feel too depressed to do anything. But what they fail to realize is that the reason they feel depressed is because they’re wasting their lives away.

Who wouldn’t feel bad living like that?

You can always tell who these people are because they’re lazy and have dirty homes, bad diets, and are late sleepers.

Sadly, it doesn’t take much for anyone to feel down about wasting time.

Something as simple as not getting that book written, or not posting to your blog often, or not getting your smaller writing projects done, can make you feel down in the dumps.

I recently read a little book called “Wake Up and Live.” It’s an old book but it has a timeless uplifting message about not wasting time, and achieving life goals.

At the moment, you can pick up a Kindle copy of this remarkable little book for only 49c on Amazon.

And it could be the 49c that changes your life.

A Little-Known ‘Trick’ That Will Get You Writing Fast When You Feel Stuck

Photo by Bekir Dönmez on Unsplash

It happens all the time to every writer. 

You’re writing and doing great, then all of a sudden, you suffer from ‘brain fog’ and your mind goes blank and you can’t think of what you were going to write next or how you were going to phrase it.

Try as you might, you can’t get back on track because your creative mind is bogged down and seems like it’s switched off for good.

So what should you do?

I learned a little-known trick that works for just about anything for when you get mentally ‘stuck’ and can’t keep going. It doesn’t matter what it is, whether it’s writing, sorting out cupboards, doing a crossword, planning a vacation, writing a to-do list, or just about anything else. It works for everything.

And strangely enough, I learned it from watching Rugby League games.

Rugby League is a popular sport here in Australia and I watch it all the time, all season long and right up to the Grand Final. I also watch the World Cup when it comes around every 4 years.

And there’s something that I learned from watching these games.

Each match goes for 40 minutes each way, with a 10 minute break in the middle which is when the teams go back into the sheds and sit down while their coach talks to them (or yells at them if they’re losing).

Usually, in the first half, one team will have scored more than the other, and sometimes much more.

But that 10 minute break always, without exception, makes a difference to how they all play in the second half.

Often the winning team will be so far ahead in the first half, that they get complacent and don’t try as hard in the second half and can even end up losing.

Other times, the losing team in the first half will come out strong in the second half and be the only team to score and come out way on top.

The half-time break can also have other effects like the winning team coming out even more revved up, or the losing team coming back out on the field feeling already depleted and hopeless and so lose by far more than they did in the first half.

Rarely, if ever, does that 10 minute break make no difference to how each team plays in the second half.

And having a break is the ‘secret.’

If you’re writing, and you suddenly find yourself struggling to write the next word, take a break. 

It only needs to be a five minute break, but you must get up and move away from your computer. Don’t read and don’t stare at another screen (like your phone).

Move away from your keyboard and do something physical. Something different.

Pat your dog, make a cup of coffee, go to the toilet, stand outside and breathe deeply, do a few stretching exercises, meditate.

Do whatever you want to do, but it needs to be something different to writing. Just like the rugby teams go indoors and sit down on their break, which is completely the opposite to what they were doing when they were playing, you need to do something completely different too, something that doesn’t involve reading or staring at a screen.

And that’s all it takes to have a mind shift, is to shift your mind away from your work for just a few minutes.

Reading this, you probably don’t believe me. But just try it for yourself.

Take regular short breaks from your writing, especially if you’re writing for long stretches of time.

Five minutes is all you need and once you sit back down, you’ll be able to carry on.

Trust me. It works.

The 12 Month Writing Challenge

Write and Publish 12 Books in a Year

https://ruthiswriting.com/books/12MTH.html