How Not To Waste Your Life [Infographic]

Life is such a slippery word. Before you know it, you are halfway through it, and you start thinking about what you have done. Some people embrace that feeling, while others fear it like the plague. I personally think the reason for that is because what we do or don’t do with our lives is in our own hands. What you decide to do with yours is entirely up to you. There are probably a million arguments why you couldn’t do things or why you didn’t succeed at doing things. However, when you think about it, that’s not what your fear is all about. When you have done your best, whether you succeeded or not, in any area, you will feel content about your life. It’s one thing to fail while doing your best, and another to just throw away your life by not even trying at all, don’t you think? So is there a way not to waste you life?

Of course there is, but I think we’d do best in looking at what our lives look like at the current moment before we start readjusting our living to not to waste time. A new study about how people spend their lives presents some rather mind boggling numbers. Not wasting life has somewhat become a science for many people. The television alone hogs up 16.44 years our lives. What’s even more disturbing is that the television takes up twice as much time as the family gets. Throughout an average life, family gets just 8.38 years.

And then of course we have work. On average, we spend 17.85 years working and 3.91 years getting there and back home again. Imagine what you could do with that transit time if you had a laptop with you on the train or bus, or a recorder to speak into while driving. You could create something that could completely change your life. It has been done before, J.K. Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter book on her way to and from work. I guess we all know what success that led to.

This infographic called Don’t Waste Your Life, presented and designed by Andi M., doesn’t only make us feel like we are throwing our lives away, but it also goes into how not to waste our lives with some rather simple changes and optimizations. As the infographic suggests, just by shedding 30 minutes off watching television each day, we can save 7.6 days a year which we could dedicate to something more meaningful. Of course, some people might feel watching TV is meaningful, so after all that, it all comes down to what your priorities are. It’s completely up to you whether you choose to waste time or not to waste time.

The scariest thing about life is that for each second that passes by, it’s a second that you won’t ever get back again. Is watching a soap opera or a reality show on TV worth it? What could you do instead in order to not waste time or your life? Are we so eager not to waste time that it leads us to actually losing more time? I guess it’s worth it to remember that in order to not waste time, you have to feel that the time wasted is worth the investment of time.