After being in college for four years, I realized that I wasted a lot of time on silly things. So, I did some research and a deep reflection on my own life to figure out what the biggest time wasters in college are. So what are the 14 biggest time wasters in college?
- Watching random videos on social media
- Spending too much time on hobbies
- Making yourself look perfect every day
- Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights at the club
- Sitting around and doing nothing with your friends
- Worrying instead of acting
- Trying to have fun with your friends every day
- Sleeping for over 8 hours
- Binge-watching movies or shows on Netflix
- Shopping every weekend
- Procrastinating when studying and completing homework
- Going to school and skipping classes
- Pursuing a major you’re not passionate about
- Using weekends as a break from school
Now that you know the biggest time wasters in college, let’s talk about them in a little more detail so that you can avoid them yourself.
1. Watching random videos on social media
If you constantly find yourself watching random videos on social media like Facebook and YouTube, you end up wasting a lot more time than you think. Every time you tell yourself that you’re just going to watch one video, you end up watching 30.
Once you’re finally bored of watching random videos, you’ll notice that a couple of hours have gone by. I’m not trying to bash the use of social media. Just don’t binge-watch a bunch of random and entertaining videos. If you want to learn how to stop wasting time on YouTube, check out this guide!
2. Spending too much time on hobbies
I always disagree with people who say students need to stop playing video games. Playing video games like many other things is a hobby, at least to some people. You wouldn’t tell someone to stop having a hobby, would you?
Everyone has hobbies. Some play sports, some draw, and others like to skateboard. There’s nothing wrong with any of them. The problem is that students will spend too much time on their hobbies. Rather than spending 20 or more hours a week on your hobbies, try spending 10. That should be more than enough time to have fun.
Related: Should You Stop Playing Video Games in College?
3. Making yourself look perfect every day
A huge time waster in college is trying to make yourself look perfect every day. You know what I’m talking about:
- Perfectly styled hair
- The perfect outfit
- Perfectly done makeup
Of course, everyone cares about their appearance. You want to go outside and feel confident about how you look. The problem is spending an hour or more a day to look good. If your school is 10-minutes away from you, you shouldn’t have to wake up at 6:00 AM just to get to school at 8:00 AM. You could do a lot in those two hours. Some examples I talk about in my How to get motivated for school in the morning guide include:
- Stretching
- Writing in a journal
- Going for a short walk or run
- Meditating
- Prepping your meals for the day
- Reading a chapter in a book
Let’s be honest. When you get to class and your peers start walking in, you pay little to no attention on how people look. If someone does catch your eye, you stop caring in a couple of seconds. You have more important things to focus on. This is the case for a lot of students too, and that’s why you don’t need to waste your time trying to look perfect every day.
4. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights at the club
Another big time waster in college is going to the club every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night. That’s just an exaggeration. However, there are some students that go clubbing once or twice a week. If you’re one of these students, take a second to think about how much time you’re wasting.
If you plan on going to the club at 11:00 PM, you start getting ready at 7:00 PM. This includes everything from buying alcohol, meeting up with friends before the club, and then finding a drive to the club. You then stay at the club for a couple of hours and leave around 2:00 AM. By the time you get in bed, another hour has passed.
You’ve now spent a total of 8 hours just to go clubbing. If you decide to go clubbing another night, you’re spending 16 hours of your week to go clubbing. Because you’re going out on a school night, you’re going to be tempted to skip school the next day. And if you do, you’re going to have to catch up on what you missed, resulting in more time wasted. As you can see, this whole process is just a big waste of time in college.
5. Sitting around and doing nothing with your friends
This one is going to be quite upsetting for some of you. If you enjoy sitting around and doing nothing with your friends, you’re wasting a lot of your time. I know it’s nice having company around, but if you’re not doing anything productive, it’s not a good use of your time.
You’re not in high school anymore where you constantly gossip and talk about random drama with your friends. It’s important to learn how to continue being productive even when your friends are around. Let them know that you want to get some things done before you sit around and talk to them.
6. Worrying instead of acting
Another big time waster in college is worrying about things instead of taking action. For example, rather than sitting around worrying about how difficult your next test or exam is going to be, why not study harder? The time you spent complaining could have gone to studying.
Remember all those times when you had a group assignment and everyone in your group was sitting around and complaining about how hard it was? As a group, you probably could have gotten through a couple of questions with the time you spent worrying and complaining. The bottom line is, stop worrying about things and start acting. You’ll save yourself a lot of time and headaches.
7. Trying to have fun with your friends every day
This is something that applies to a lot of college students. For some reason, students want to have fun with their friends every single day. I know this is true because my friends and I used to be just like this. We had a group chat on Facebook where we would make plans every single day. Everyone was always concerned about what we were going to do next.
We made plans for the entire week, even on school days. In a single week, we would do everything from:
- Going to a friend’s house to hang out
- Play board games
- Go bowling
- Play pool and darts
- Go to the bar or a local event
As you can see, our activities are not productive. If you find yourself in a similar situation with your friends, you need to stop. It’s a big waste of time as you’re not doing anything productive. All you’re doing is having some fun with people you like, all while spending a lot of money.
8. Sleeping for over 8 hours
The National Sleep Foundation recommends adults to have between 7 and 9 hours of sleep. For most people, 8 hours of sleep is plenty. However, there are some students that sleep for much more than 8 hours. If you sleep 10-12 hours in a single day, you’re wasting your time.
You only have 24 hours in a single day. It’s not a good idea to spend half of your day sleeping. After all the basic things you do on a daily basis such as:
- Getting ready in the morning
- Cooking and eating food
- Using the washroom
- Chatting with friends and family
You’re realistically left with 8 or so hours. If you go to school for 5 hours, you’re now left with 3 hours.
That’s not enough time to get a lot of things done. This is especially true when you’re in college. The next you have a good night’s sleep and your alarm goes off, get up.
9. Binge-watching movies or shows on Netflix
If you love Netflix as much as I do, you’ll know how much time you waste on it. New movies and shows are constantly being released, and they sometimes take forever to finish. There are some shows on Netflix like Suits that have 8 seasons to watch! Each season has 14 episodes, and each episode is over 40-minutes. That totals to around over 560 minutes of watch-time. This is the equivalent of 23 days.
If you for some reason decided to finish Suits as soon as possible, it would take you 23 days straight with no sleep. You should never binge-watch anything on Netflix because it’ll take up too much of your time. The worst part is that when you finish a series, you want to watch more. So what do you do? You start another series and the cycle repeats. Stick to watching one movie or 1-2 episodes of a series every week or so.
10. Shopping every weekend
Similar to trying to have fun with your friends every day, another time waster is going shopping every weekend. If you go shopping without a plan in mind, you could stay there for many hours. Shopping centers and malls do a great job of keeping customers there.
With all the deals and promotions going on, you’ll continue to shop until all the stores close. Not only is this time-consuming, it’s also expensive. Next time you plan to go shopping with your friends and family, make sure you have a shopping list of the things you need to buy. Notice how I said “need” and not “want.”
Having a shopping list is very important for those who love to shop at places they’ve never been to. Without a shopping list, you’re going to want to see what every store has to offer.
11. Procrastinating when studying and completing homework
Another big time waster in college is procrastinating when studying and doing your homework. We all know how long it can take to study for a test or finish 30 questions for homework. You’re making it even worse when you decide to procrastinate. I’m talking to students who:
- Try to find cheat sheets online
- Ask other students for their work
- Take a break every 5-minutes
Rather than trying to find shortcuts or putting in little effort to finish your work, you should just do the work. The amount of time you spend procrastinating could have been used to actually get the work done. If you’re trying to find an answer for a question you’re stuck on, don’t spend 10-minutes typing the question in Google and opening up every result you see. Also, don’t ask your friends for their answers and wait hours for them to reply.
Instead, look back at your notes and refer to other questions you’ve completed. You’ll be able to come up with an answer a lot sooner than using the lazy methods above. Not only are you wasting time, but you’re also not going to learn anything by copying and pasting. It’s just not a good use of your time.
12. Going to school and skipping classes
One of the biggest time wasters in college is going to school and skipping classes, especially if you’re not ahead of your class schedule. If you’ve decided to skip your classes, why did you even bother going to school? Wouldn’t it make more sense to stay home?
If you skip class, you’re going to have to make up what you missed another day. This puts you in a terrible position when you have a test or assignment coming up because you have no idea what to do.
You’re forced to learn what you missed on your own time. To make matters worse, what you learn on your own may be different from how your professor taught it. This means you’ll have to verify that what you learned on your own is acceptable by your professor. Stop skipping and go to class!
13. Pursuing a major you’re not passionate about
Another one of the biggest time wasters in college is pursuing a major you’re not passionate about. Once you graduate college, you’re most likely going to find a job in your field of study. Unfortunately, if you’re not passionate about your job, you’re going to dread going to work every day. This is a HUGE waste of your time because you could be doing something you love!
When you love what you do, it doesn’t feel like “work.” You’re doing what you love, and you’re getting paid for it. It doesn’t get better than that. When you finally realize this, you’ll want to go back to college and pursue your passion. Even though this is going to take a few more years, the investment is definitely worth it. I know this is a difficult topic to talk about, so don’t make any rash decisions. Consult with a career advisor.
14. Using weekends as a break from school
Like most people, they look forward to the weekends because they don’t have to go to work. When it comes to college students, we look forward to the weekends because it’s a break from school. However, when you actually look at the numbers, you’ll see how silly it sounds.
The average college student spends between 12 and 16 hours per week in class. There are 112 hours in a week (excluding 8 hours of sleep per night) which means students spend less than 15% of their time per week in school. Let’s say you do 15 hours worth of studying and homework per week. That’s still less than 30% of your time on a weekly basis!
You don’t need to use the weekends as a break from school. You have so much time to do more than you already do! Rather than using your weekends to sit around or go out partying, why not do something productive? For starters, pick up a part-time job so you can start paying back your student loans! If you want to learn some ways to stop wasting time in college, check out this blog!
Conclusion
Avoid these biggest time wasters in college so that you have more time on your hands to do productive things. Learning how to manage your time will allow you to graduate from college successfully.
If you can think of any other time wasters in college, let everyone know by leaving a comment down below!
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