5 Time Vampires Everyone Should Watch Out For

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Time vampires are events that drain your time, seemingly innocuously. For example, 10 minutes of wasted time daily adds up to over 60 hours in a year.

Let's look at five time vampires that can easily creep into our lives and their solutions.

1. Looking for Out-of-Place Items

Consider two categories here. The first is lost items, like a library book that needs to be returned. The second category is items that are merely out of place, and slow down your routines. For example, I pack a snack and water bottle for my child when we go to the gym. If her water bottle gets left in the car from the previous day, it needs to be located, retrieved, and washed. All this slows down our morning routine.

Solution: Try a strategy from aviation, called "flows," to solve the issue of out-of-place items. Flows are a specific order of operations that ensure items aren't missed. For example, a pilot might have a flow to check that all the switches in their cockpit are in their correct positions before starting the plane.

A flow is like a mental checklist. As the name implies, it's fluid, like it's in muscle memory. If you create very consistent routines, and make them fluid, you can help ensure everything ends up in its right place.

2. Considering Decisions Only to Ultimately Revert to Your Default Choice

Consider this scenario: You need to buy a new car. You spend several weeks looking at a large selection of possible choices, only to buy a Nissan. The last three cars you've purchased have all been Nissan.

A similar pattern occurs on a smaller scale. For example, you think about what dish you might bring to an event, only to end up bringing the dish you almost always bring. Or, you watch YouTube videos of recipes for an hour a week but continue to make the same dinners you always make. Or, you find yourself thinking about where to go to dinner, only to stick with your usual Friday night takeout spot.

Most self-sabotaging patterns in our lives are like fractals; they repeat on larger and smaller scales.

Solution: One way to reduce this pattern is to see the funny side of it. If you can see that it is slightly comical when you catch yourself considering options you're unlikely to go with, it can help you gently shift your behavior.

Another strategy is to commend yourself for your desire to explore new options. Exploration is a productive and healthy drive. Recognize and validate that drive, but channel it toward situations where it's more likely to result in different behavior.

3. Considering the Order in Which to Do Things, When You're Going to Do Them All Anyway

One way to spot pointless overthinking is to identify instances of thinking that don't change your behavior. Imagine you've got a to-do list for the day. It all needs to get done. You spend 10 minutes contemplating what you're going to do first. If this mental effort doesn't change what you do by the end of the day, it's rather pointless.

Conserve your mental energy to use it more productively elsewhere.

Solution: When you notice yourself having this mental conversation, actually start on one of your to-dos instead. Get one task completed in the time you'd otherwise spend thinking about what to start with.

4. Nagging Others

When it's between adults, nagging is often due to a mismatch in values. Nagging happens when we value something, and we try to convince someone who doesn't share our values to buy into what we value. For example, I sometimes nag my spouse to do a task more efficiently, when she doesn't care about efficiency. It's not a high value for her. Therefore trying to appeal to the value of efficiency is futile, and results in nagging.

Solution: Recognize the futility of trying to impose a value on someone else. We're all different. Again, seeing the humor in this pattern can help you gently shift your behavior when you catch yourself doing it.

5. Getting Stuck in Traffic Because You Don't Check for Delays on Familiar Driving Routes

Self-Sabotage Essential Reads

When Does Self-Sufficiency Become Self-Sabotage?

Why Do We Self-Sabotage?

Accidents and construction can change which driving route is fastest on a given day. However, if we're driving somewhere familiar, we'll tend to take our usual route without checking which route is better at that particular moment.

Solution: Use a map app that calculates the best real-time choice.

This brings us back to the concept of flows. If you set your destination in a map app and follow the suggested route as part of your driving flow, you can potentially avoid frustrating delays.

People overlook this time vampire because major delays might only happen infrequently, even though average time savings can still be worthwhile.

Even if you don't want to always use a maps app, you can also try this as a temporary experiment to update your assumptions about the quickest way to get to your typical destinations.

Even Addressing One of These Time Vampires Is Significant

As stated in the introduction, 10 minutes daily is over 60 hours in a year. Even if addressing all your time vampires feels overwhelming, there are very significant benefits to addressing even just one that occurs regularly.

For more practical strategies that help your life run more smoothly, check out this guide on preventing bad decisions.