Shi:
Alright, welcome to the final installment of the Kay & Shi Show here on the series, talking about things we don’t do. Now, in our first installment, we talked about talking smack. That’s the thing that we don’t do very much of and definitely bring as much attention to it as we can. The next two installments drinking and eating meat are things that we absolutely abstain from. Going to end off this series here with one that we’re going to talk about, wasting time. Another one that’s a little bit of that gray hat area. Of course, obviously, we waste some time. We are not efficient robots maximizing each and every moment and second. But we do, I think, do a very good job of doing our best to utilize and maximize the time that we do have and even some of those activities that might seem like wasting time, combining those with ones that are not wasting time in order to neutralize them out, I think is a great strategy I’m excited to share about today.
Kay:
I’m so glad Shi that you said that this is one of those gray areas and that we do find ourselves occasionally wasting time. You cannot be perfect 100% of the time and…
Shi:
Yes, we scroll on social media too long sometimes.
Kay:
Yes, but bringing more awareness to it. I think just at the beginning of this year, Shila, you said “I’m spending too much time on Reddit,” and you put a cap on that for yourself.
Shi:
Yeah. I actually moved it off my front page into my fourth page of apps on my phone. It just helps me because now as I’m taking that intentional swiping action to get there, I have the opportunity to ask myself, “Is this really what I want to be doing right now, and is there something more productive that I need to be doing right now?” “Wasting time,” that spending time not doing things that are productive is an important piece of your human development and your overall wholeness and balance. But what we really have tried to do is bring intention and attention to that time so that we can say, look, this is rest time right now and not letting rest time be, oops, I let 90 minutes get hijacked this afternoon. So, that was my rest time and now I’m going to take rest time is just one of those ways that we’ve been able to, I think, curb this a little bit.
Kay:
When we talk about being productive too, we’re not talking about producing only in the capitalistic sense. We’re not talking about maximizing every moment to work absolutely everything. But like Shila said, bring more intentionality into doing the things that we like. It doesn’t mean that scrolling on social media is wrong. It’s just that, is that automatically happening on your behalf or are you intentionally doing that, spending that time in a way that you intend to, instead of just allowing the time to pass as it passes based on the habits that have constructed in your life?
Shi:
So, one of the ways that I’ve been able to kind of compress this one here is I love keeping up on pop culture shows and certainly have my favorites and my genres and things. But there’s not a lot of TV time happening in our lives. So, I only watch the show that I want to watch while I am on the treadmill. Now, I spend five hours a week on the treadmill, which means I get five hours a week of watching something ridiculously not productive at all. “Marvelous Miss Maisel,” “Game of Thrones,”
Kay:
“Bridgerton.”
Shi:
“Bridgerton,” “Outlander,” “Emily in Paris,” “Ted Lasso.” I feel like I’ve been able to keep up on some of the best shows and that gives me a connection point, which I really appreciate, but not willing to spend five hours a week that’s not coupled with another activity for me that could be productive. So, this is one way where I get that wasting time without actually wasting the time.
Kay:
Back in 2016, we attended a Tony Robbins conference and I set a goal to read 50 books in a year. Now, the only way that that goal was going to get met–because there’s not a whole lot of hours in the day with businesses and with kids and all that good stuff–was to utilize time that I already had in my life and add books onto that. So, the time that I chose was car time and now our car time has become audiobook time and now we’ve added in the shower because we’ve been working from home quite a bit and car time has been less and less. But it’s allowed for that level of productivity and goal setting to come into a time when my mind is already open and would likely be spent either just listening to music that I’ve heard a million times already, that same playlist that you just put on because it’s in the background, or that I would spend thinking or ruminating maybe in the shower on something that isn’t as productive as allowing a book to come in and fill my learning cup.
Shi:
Right, and we also love to do audiobooks while you’re doing your laundry or your dishes, or maybe some of your food prep. If you want to groove and boogie, music is an amazing tool, but even if you took half of that time and just started listening to books then you can accumulate like Kay did and get 50 books in a year just by adding that to something you’re already doing. We’ve seen those things compress. So yes, we do waste time, but we do our best never to waste your time which is what we always say is your most precious resource and we do our best to maximize our own time as well so that we’re being intentional with the way we approach our time management.
Kay:
We’ve had so much fun getting to talk about the things that we don’t do here this week and appreciate you being with us. We will see you again next week.
Shi:
Thanks for tuning in to the Kay & Shi Show.
