Unproductive habits - Not valuing your time

Understand the value of your time

Here’s a resolution for you: Value your time. Literally. When you go to work, you’re selling your time, not just your skills or experience. Your skills or experience add value to your time, but time is what you’re ultimately selling. That means your time has an hourly rate attached to it, whether you realize it or not. Take a moment to figure out what that rate is (if you’re not paid by the hour, start with your annual salary and divide by 2,080 to get a very rough idea).

Now you can think about every single thing you do in terms of the cost of your time relative to the rest of your life. If you normally get paid $25 an hour to do work, that number will help you figure out whether you‘re using your time wisely, or if someone is taking advantage of you. Feel free to give yourself a raise if you are pretty sure you are underpaid at your job - but also resolve to get a new job if that is the case.

Value your time

If you’re quick to drop everything to help someone else, you might be doing so in order to please others. But that says something else about you. And that makes people respect you a lot less.

Pleasing others is not the same as maintaining self-respect.

This is a hard lesson for many to learn. We all grew up knowing the rewards of pleasing parents and teachers. Unfortunately, this doesn’t apply in the adult world.

Pleasing others at the expense of your integrity and freedom is not empowering.

According to James Madison University,

“excessive people pleasing has the potential for numerous negative consequences. [A people-pleaser] may experience fear of rejection and disappointing others, have low self-esteem, difficulty making independent decisions, and difficulty setting healthy boundaries.”

Instead, honor yourself first. If you do decide to help others, make sure you both gain in the process (i.e., you do it out of a genuine desire to help, not to impress).

Say no

See Habits - Say No. Stop being a Yes Man.

Most people are afraid to say no. Maybe you don’t want to let people down. Maybe you are uncomfortable with the word no.

Doesn’t matter, really. What matters is this: If you keep saying yes, you’re living someone else’s life. We’re not in control of our own time.

Do you want to be in full control of your life? Say no to a million things and yes to a few things that matter.