4 Don’t waste time

When 94 independent tests are combined, individuals who expressed their plans as “if… then…” statements had higher success rates. This technique is known in psychology as implementation intentions. The effect size here is d = 0.65, which qualifies as moderate to large. Three key moments benefit from this approach: initiating action, resisting distractions, and disengaging from tasks that are bound to fail.

Put several studies of implementation intentions together, and an "if... then..." set in advance also helps people pull out of things that were never going to get done. The original wording is disengagement from failing courses of action. The time saved is the time you would otherwise have kept putting in.

Prior investments of money, effort, and time increase the likelihood of continued engagement. This is known as the sunk cost effect in psychology. Analysis of 98 datasets confirms this tendency is stable. Avoiding this bias prevents people from continuing to invest time solely to avoid “wasting” what they have already spent.

Students originally expected to finish their papers in 33.9 days, but the actual time taken was 55.5 days. Only 29.7% of them completed their work by their own estimates. When researchers asked another group of students to first relate past experiences to the current task before estimating, the proportion of students finishing on time rose from 29.3% to 60.0% compared to the control group. This optimism of underestimating timelines no longer appeared in this group.

Two surveys involved 958 and 292 participants respectively. Results showed that meetings with pre-distributed agendas were perceived as more effective by attendees — a statistically significant relationship. In another experiment, 55 groups met while seated and 56 while standing; seated meetings again ran 34% longer, with no difference in decision quality between the two formats.

Two surveys involved employees working 35+ hours per week – one with 676 participants, the other with 304. How much time meetings consume and their impact on attitude and happiness aren’t fixed; they depend on two factors: how well the meetings are run and how much a role depends on other people to get the work done. Another study asked participants to keep daily logs for a week; it found that on days with more meetings, fatigue and perceived workload were higher. The time saved equals precisely the duration of those canceled meetings.

People tend to overlook the need to split multi-component tasks into smaller parts when estimating timelines. For instance, writing a literature review, drafting the discussion section, and organizing references are all distinct tasks. By first listing all relevant subtasks and then estimating the overall time, one makes the common planning mistake of underestimating duration less often. Moreover, once tasks are broken down, each small step becomes a concrete action that can be started immediately, thereby lowering procrastination rates. In the research, the strongest predictors of procrastination include a person’s aversion to the task and the task itself being pushed back.

Of students with an external deadline, 80.6% finished before the deadline. Only 38.7% finished within the time they themselves expected. When the work gets done almost follows the deadline. The correlation coefficient is r = 0.82. The closer this number is to 1, the more tightly it follows. The link with their own expectation is only weak.

A meta-analysis that included 691 correlation coefficients found several factors with a strong, consistent link to procrastination: how aversive the task is, how much time remains until the deadline, self-efficacy (the belief in one’s ability to succeed), impulsivity, and conscientiousness — including self-control, susceptibility to distraction, organization skills, and achievement motivation. In contrast, neuroticism, rebelliousness, and sensation-seeking show only very weak connections to procrastination. The authors explain these results using time motivation theory: the immediate appeal of a task drops rapidly as the expected reward is pushed further into the future.

A Cochrane review encompassing 24 randomized trials supports these findings. Moving food farther away reduces consumption, with a standardized mean difference of −0.60 (95% CI −0.84 to −0.36; based on 12 studies involving 1,098 participants; evidence of low certainty). Limiting food options yields an even stronger effect, with a standardized mean difference of −1.13 (95% CI −1.90 to −0.37; based on 3 studies involving 154 participants; evidence of low certainty). Regression analysis confirms that both distance and fewer choices amplify the effect.

A randomized trial of 2538 people in the United States randomly assigned employees and their family and friends to 4 incentive plans or to usual care. The reward type (about 800 dollars if you succeed) had an acceptance rate of 90.0%. The deposit type (pay 150 dollars first, plus a 650 dollar reward) had 13.7%. Sustained quit rates at 6 months: the 4 incentive plans were between 9.4% and 16.0%, and usual care was 6.0%. The reward type was 15.7%, and the deposit type was 10.2%. But counting only the 13.7% of people willing to join both of the 2, the deposit type's quit rate at 6 months was 13.2 percentage points higher than the reward type (95% CI 3.1 to 22.8, which is the confidence range).

96 volunteers each chose a simple action related to eating, drinking, or physical activity, and performed it daily in a fixed context (such as “after breakfast”) for 12 weeks, rating how automatic the action felt each day. Data from 82 participants proved sufficient for analysis, and the model successfully matched 62 of them. The number of days required to reach 95% of each person’s own automaticity ceiling ranged from 18 to 254 days. The study also showed that missing one day of practice has no meaningful impact on habit formation.

150 participants were randomly assigned to three groups: self-help with therapist guidance, self-help without guidance, and a waitlist control group. After ten weeks, effect sizes on the pure procrastination scale were d = 0.70 (95% CI 0.29–1.10) for the guided group and d = 0.50 (0.10–0.90) for the unguided group. On the irrational procrastination scale, these values were 0.81 (0.40–1.22) and 0.69 (0.29–1.09) respectively. The proportion of participants achieving clinically meaningful improvement was 31.3% to 40.0% in the guided group and 24.0% to 36.0% in the unguided group. No statistically significant differences were observed between the two self-help groups on any outcome measure.

According to a 2024 survey covering 38,500 households and 107,000 individuals, Chinese residents spend an average of 1 hour and 17 minutes daily on household chores; for those who actually perform them, the average rises to 1 hour and 59 minutes. Another study involving 6,271 participants from four countries found that people who purchase time report higher life satisfaction. Researchers also conducted real-world experiments showing that spending the same sum on time rather than physical goods results in greater immediate well-being.

The average daily online time for Chinese residents is 5 hours and 37 minutes; for those who actually use the internet that day it is 6 hours and 3 minutes. People who accessed the web on any given day make up 92.9% of the population. These figures are from 2024. In 2018, by the same calculation, it was only 2 hours and 42 minutes. This is the largest number in this section. Removing one hour each day yields an extra 365 hours annually. According to the China Internet Network Information Center, as of June 2025 the average weekly online time for netizens is 30.6 hours, an increase of 1.9 hours over the previous six months. There are 1.068 billion short-video users, accounting for 95.1% of all internet users.

Americans aged 15 and older watch 2.6 hours of TV daily. Their total leisure time is 5.2 hours, so TV viewing consumes half of it. These figures are from 2025. In China, the average daily TV viewing time is 1 hour and 40 minutes; for those aged 75–84, it is 3 hours and 16 minutes. These numbers date back to 2018.

The study looked at 251 experienced Word users. Most of them rarely used the faster shortcuts and still mainly clicked the icon toolbar. Experiments that compared groups confirmed that, of these 3 methods, menus, icons, and shortcuts, shortcuts were the fastest. The time saved accumulates a little with each action each day. People who do the same kind of work for a long time gain the most.

On average, Chinese residents spend 50 minutes daily on transportation; among those who travel on a given day, the average is 1 hour and 2 minutes, according to 2024 data. Longitudinal studies in Germany show that people with longer commutes consistently report lower subjective well-being — meaning they feel their lives are worse. This loss isn’t made up in income or housing. A comprehensive review of multiple studies confirms that the longer the commute, the less satisfied people are with the commute, regardless of the mode of transport used. Reducing one-way travel time by 30 minutes yields roughly 5 extra hours per week.