What habits have crept into your life that you may not even be aware of, that are robbing you of your most valuable resource…your time?

We’ve all heard the saying, “Time is more valuable than money.” When Jim Rohn would teach this principle he added, “You can get more money, but you can’t get more time.”

If that’s the case, and time is our most valuable asset, then how well are we using it, and what are we doing to make sure we get the most from it?

For many of us in today’s world, we have acquired habits, even addictions that rob us of our most valuable asset, time, and yet we probably either don’t see them as such, or are completely blind to them. Let’s look at two of them, and what can be done to combat them.

#1 Distractions

A year or so ago, I came across an old electronic video game that took me back to my high school days. I came up with some rationale to buy it (as a prize for games in an upcoming family gathering), and ended up bringing it home. It was a little more advanced than Pong, but only slightly. As a kid, the only video games we had cost a quarter to play and you had to go to the corner convenience store to play them, or buy a game like the football game that got old fairly quickly, but that we would still play for hours.

Back then most of us had to go looking for these forms of entertainment, and they weren’t in our faces all the time. Today, that’s not the case.

Smart phones have given us tremendous capabilities. From the perspective of self-improvement, I use mine to track my weight, calories, sleep, heart rate and sometimes exercise. I can track my actual spending against my spending plan and see how I’m doing there. They let us keep in touch with each other through email, social media, texting, and sometimes even as a phone, (go figure). We are even able to video chat with our daughter and her family who live 8 time zones away from us in Europe, so that despite the distance, we can still see and interact with them.

These are all great tools, but these advances come with a subtle but powerful cost, and I’m not talking about your cell phone bill. The many uses of a smart phone are costing us our attention and our ability to focus.

As a test to see how addicted you are to your technology and screens, try to go a full 24 hour period without using your smartphone or electronic device. Darren Hardy calls these “Disconnected Days.” His definition is to go without email, social media, phone calls or texting for a 24-hour period. If you think you can do this, I invite you to give it a try.

In terms of cost to your most valuable resource, your time, one study showed that getting back on task after a distraction requires an amazing 23 minutes and 15 seconds on average. Ironically, half of the interruptions that people experience are self-induced. We stop what we’re doing to check email, or Facebook, or the stock-market or to text someone something that we thought about. The same study found that people are interrupted on average every three minutes and five seconds. If you do the math, this indicates that we go through the day not focused on any one thing, but dealing with distractions all day long.

If you are ready to reclaim a significant chunk of your time and focus back, then do this: delete every game app on your smartphone or tablet.

If you want even more time back, never take your smartphone into the bathroom.

#2 Information Addiction

How often during the day do you check news feeds, turn on the radio to get news, or watch some form of television or other broadcast news? If you find yourself doing it multiple times during the day, you are giving yourself a self-induced distraction and spending time on something that gives you little or no value. What benefit do you get from being up to date on the news?

After I had deleted all the game apps from my smartphone, what else was there to do when going to the bathroom, besides checking news feeds? (I hadn’t yet taken up the challenge to not take my smartphone into the bathroom). Here again is a subtle, but expensive time waster. Being current on the latest local and national news masquerades as a virtue. It is something “responsible” people do.

I ask again, what benefit do you get from knowing all the “news-worthy” events going on in your neighborhood, or elsewhere in the world? Usually it will just degrade your faith in humanity and sour your attitude. Why would you spend your most valuable resource, your time, to fill your mind with things outside of your circle of influence that will negatively impact you emotionally?

Rather than using time to listen to news feeds, replace that with some kind of educational content. There are lots of books available in audio format that can provide you education in areas of your life that you want to improve in. This can be free time available to you, if you replace the time you spend listening to, or watching news feeds, with something that can help you improve your life or the lives of those around you.

In summary:

If you have games on your smartphone, tablet or electronic device, delete them

Don’t take your smartphone with you to the bathroom

Start adding “Disconnected Days” to your schedule

Replace all or the majority of the time you spend reading or listening to news with educational or self-improvement content

To see you you’re doing overall relating to personal development, take this two-minute survey.