Are you wasting time in your 20s?

“You don’t want to take initiative or responsibility, so you check your incoming mail, your Twitter stream, and your blog comments. Surely, there’s something to play off of, something to get angry about, some meeting to go to. I know someone who goes to forty conferences a year and never seems to actually produce anything.” — Seth Godin

Far too many of us spend our 20s wasting precious. Money comes and goes. Time goes and never comes back. Once you lose time, you’re never going to get it back. That time is simply gone forever. You can make your money back. You can never get your time back.

I’m not here to be all negative. I wanted to write a piece for those of you that want to make the most out of your 20s. This is for everyone that wants to see some serious results before they hit the age of 30.

What can you do to avoid wasting time in your 20s?

Get your work done first.

It’s far too easy to put your work off until later. It doesn’t matter what you want to work on. You need to start your work first. The more you put your work off or starting a new business, the less likely you are to do anything. It’s easy to talk the walk. Do you actually walk the walk?

My recommendation is simple: start your day off by doing the most important thing first. Then you can watch UFC fights on YouTube for the rest of the evening.

Plan lazy time.

There’s nothing wrong with lazy time. I actually encourage that you have lazy time. I’m lazy pretty often to be honest. I sleep in. I watch WWE and UFC for hours. I slack off often. The trick to slacking off is that you plan for it (planning slacking, what if you’re too lazy?).

The reason that I love to plan lazy time is that I won’t feel bad about it. We usually feel bad about eating junk food or slacking off because we never planned for it and we feel guilty. I hate guilt. There’s no time to feel guilty. This is why I plan my lazy time. I slack off like a champ. Then I get back to work.

Think of the bigger picture.

What’s your bigger goal? Do you have a bigger picture? I find that when I worry about some minor detail or some random crap, the reason is that I’m missing out on the big picture. For me, I see myself working in this field and helping young people for many years to come. That’s my bigger picture. Sure, many issues will arise over the years. Money will be tight at times. Relationships will bring you down. Many bad things will happen. What’s important is that you keep your eye on the prize.

Ignore the distractions.

There are far too many distractions around us these days. You go on Facebook to respond to a message and next you know, two hours have passed by. Getting distracted and wasted time is easier than ever before (ask anyone with an iPhone). If you manage to at least ignore the distractions half of the time, you’ll be ahead of the game. Go ahead and close this window. Ditch ALL distractions if you have to.

At the end of the day, we all are bound to waste some time in our 20s. There’s no need to waste all of our time. Why not make use of our valuable time? I don’t want you to look back at these years to regret. I want you to smile!

Martin Dasko

Martin Dasko