We all fall victim to the endless pit that is distractions. For most of us, our procrastination is fueled by meaningless or unfulfilling activities. These inevitably takeaway time from something else, causing a vicious cycle of playing catch up. Constantly feeling behind can leave you feeling guilty, inadequate, or unprofessional. Studies show that procrastination contributes significantly to declines in mental health, increased levels of stress, and lower levels of well-being.
So What Do We Do?
The answer is almost annoyingly simple.
Asses A Monetary Value To Your Time.
That’s right. Believe it or not, your time is actively costing money. This isn’t meant to cause you stress by any means. This is simply to recenter your focus on things you believe are of value.
Take your salary and divide it into an hourly wage. When you are partaking in an activity, this your hourly salary is effectively what you are “spending”. We recommend accounting for the heavy load of unpaid labor women perform every day, including but not limited to motherhood, cleaning, cooking, grocery shopping, familial relationships.
For example:
Salary from running a business full time + caring for 3 children (1 under 1) + maintaining a semi-clean house + being a short-order cook + being the grocery store gopher + being the maintainer of extended familial relationships = $90/hour.
While this may not be a perfect calculation, it allows you to assess how adequately you are spending your time.
You can even apply this to your workday and make changes as necessary. Keep note of how you are spending your time, and use your monetary value to reevaluate how your workday is spent.
This is not to imply that escapism or downtime activities are wrong or that you should be all work and no play. Quite the contrary – it is simply a philosophy that forces you to prioritize what you value, rather than what your brain prompts you to do in a moment where you get the itch for just a few more minutes of screentime.
Identify that bad habit (social media? Netflix binging? Youtube?) that gives you less than you give it, calculate your hourly wage, add in the value of your unpaid work and decide “Now that I know my hourly estimate, how will I spend my time?”
