Alethea Jimison
Author, Poet, & Truth-Teller
What if I told you you’re spending 7.5 hours a day on something that’s stealing your life? Not dramatically. Not theoretically. Literally draining the one resource you can never replenish: your time.
The most valuable thing you will ever own isn’t a Bugatti, a house, or a bank account stacked with commas. It’s time.
Time is the only currency you can never get back. Once you spend it, it’s gone. No refunds. No exchanges. No do-overs. That makes it more precious than gold—and far more expensive than the flashy distractions we chase.
And yet, look around: most of us are bleeding out our hours on meaningless stimulation, toxic relationships, and digital rabbit holes designed to keep us numb. If you’re ready to stop wasting time and start living with intention, this is your wake-up call.
Why Time Is Your Most Valuable Asset
Let’s do the math. The average human lifespan is roughly 79 years. Subtract the 26 years you’ll spend sleeping, and you’re left with about 53 waking years. Now subtract time spent working, commuting, eating, and handling basic survival—and you’re looking at maybe 20-25 years of truly discretionary time.
Twenty years. That’s it.
Every hour you spend scrolling, every evening you waste with people who drain you, every weekend lost to binge-watching shows you won’t remember—that’s not just time. That’s life. Your life. The opportunity cost of wasting time isn’t just what you didn’t do. It’s who you didn’t become.
Time is the currency of transformation. You can always make more money. You can replace possessions. But you cannot buy back a single second. That’s why how you spend your time is how you spend your life.
The Entertainment Trap: How Screens Steal Your Life
Let’s be clear—entertainment isn’t the enemy. A good laugh, a good story, a moment of joy—that’s human. But when entertainment becomes your escape hatch, when you use it to avoid your own reflection, it becomes a drug.
Dopamine, stimulation, and the endless chase for “just one more episode” or “five more minutes” on your phone? That’s not leisure. That’s addiction disguised as relaxation.
Nielsen reports the average American adult watches four and a half hours of television every single day. Add another three hours glued to a smartphone, and you’ve already buried half your waking life under someone else’s programming.
And that’s what it is—programming. Not just TV shows, but ads. Billions of dollars spent to tell you you’re not enough, don’t have enough, need more. Six to ten thousand ads a day shaping your desire into chains.
The Phone Addiction Epidemic
Here’s a stat that should terrify you: the average person touches their phone 2,617 times per day, according to a dscout study. That’s not a typo. Two thousand, six hundred, seventeen touches. Every swipe, every tap, every notification pull is a micro-decision to give your attention away.
Social media platforms are engineered by neuroscientists and behavioral psychologists to hijack your dopamine system. The infinite scroll, the red notification dot, the variable reward schedule—these aren’t accidents. They’re weapons-grade persuasion designed to keep you hooked.
Try this: Track your screen time for three days. No judgment. Just awareness. Look at the hours. Then ask yourself: if someone paid you $50 an hour to invest that time in your dreams instead, would your life look different in a year?
The Hidden Cost of Toxic Relationships
It’s not just screens stealing your time. Sometimes it’s people.
Ask yourself: are you wasting your life sitting in circles that drain you? Drinking buddies. Club “friends.” Negative people who thrive on complaining but never on growth.
Jim Rohn famously said you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with. If you’re surrounded by mediocrity, addiction, or small thinking—then you’ve already chosen a life you don’t want.
Energy Vampires vs. Life-Givers
Not all relationships are created equal. Some people are life-givers—they inspire you, challenge you, celebrate your growth, and hold you accountable to your highest self. Others are energy vampires—they drain your time with drama, negativity, and endless loops of the same problems they refuse to solve.
The cost of toxic relationships isn’t just emotional. It’s temporal. Every hour spent managing someone else’s chaos is an hour you didn’t spend building your own vision. Every conversation that leaves you depleted is energy you can’t invest in your purpose.
Audit your top five: Who lifts you? Who drains you? Who would you want your children to become? If the answer makes you uncomfortable, it’s time to raise your standards.
How to Reclaim Your Time (The Undoctrination Way)
Value yourself enough to raise your standards. Surround yourself with people who actually live the way you want to live. People who inspire you. People who push you higher instead of pulling you under.
And while you’re at it—learn. Every single day. Not trivia, not distraction. Learn something that sharpens you, grows you, builds you.
Intentional Living Practices
1. Guard your mornings. The first hour of your day sets the tone for everything that follows. Instead of reaching for your phone, reach for your journal. Read. Move your body. Feed your mind before the world demands your attention.
2. Curate your inputs. Unfollow accounts that make you feel less-than. Unsubscribe from emails that clutter your mind. Choose one podcast, one book, one teacher at a time—and go deep instead of wide.
3. Schedule your learning. Block 30 minutes a day for growth. Read about systems thinking, sovereignty, nutrition, history—anything that builds the life you want. Consistency beats intensity every time.
4. Practice the 10-10-10 rule. Before saying yes to anything, ask: Will this matter in 10 minutes? 10 months? 10 years? If the answer is no across the board, it’s a distraction.
5. Build your undoctrination library. Seek out voices that challenge the programming. Question everything. Learn to think critically, not just consume passively.
The Truth About How You Spend Your Time
We are all wired for purpose. For happiness. For something more than scrolling, binging, numbing, and consuming.
But here’s the uncomfortable truth: most of us are living someone else’s life. We’re spending our time the way we were conditioned to spend it—not the way we would choose if we were truly free.
The system wants you distracted. It wants you tired, overstimulated, and too numb to question why you feel empty despite having everything you were told would make you happy.
Breaking free starts with one question: How are you spending your time?
Not how you wish you were spending it. Not how you plan to spend it someday. Right now. Today. This week.
Because if you don’t spend it with intention, someone else is already cashing it in.
Take the First Step
Ready to stop bleeding out your hours and start living with purpose? Download the free chapter of WTF Is Going On: A Sacredly Snarky Survival Guide to the Apocalypse and begin your undoctrination journey today.
Join thousands of truth-seekers, rebels, and awakening souls who are reclaiming their time, their power, and their lives.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much time does the average person waste per day?Studies show the average American spends 4.5 hours watching TV and 3+ hours on their smartphone daily—that’s over 7.5 hours of potentially wasted time, not including low-value social interactions or mindless activities.
What are the signs I’m wasting time on toxic relationships?You feel drained after spending time with certain people, conversations loop without resolution, you’re managing their chaos instead of building your vision, and you wouldn’t want your future self to emulate their choices.
How do I break phone addiction?Start by tracking your screen time for awareness, remove social media apps from your home screen, turn off non-essential notifications, set app limits, and replace phone time with intentional activities like reading or journaling.
What does it mean to live intentionally?Intentional living means making conscious choices about how you spend your time, energy, and attention—aligning daily actions with your values and long-term vision rather than reacting to distractions and external demands.
How can I make better use of my time?Audit how you currently spend time, eliminate or reduce low-value activities, protect your mornings, curate your inputs (media, relationships, content), schedule daily learning, and practice the 10-10-10 rule before committing to anything new.