How to get more from the time you spend online
posted Friday May 24, 2024 by Scott Ertz
How much time do you spend online each day? For many of us, a lot of our time is spent using the internet, whether it's during work time or our downtime. In fact, research shows that internet users spend a massive six hours and 35 minutes of their time each day online. That's certainly a significant amount of time.
The amount of time that people should spend online and using screens each day is a subject of much debate. But there's no doubt that it would be pretty hard to avoid using the internet completely. Now that we all have so much information, entertainment, and possibilities available at our fingertips, it's no surprise that people want to dive in and experience it.
There's no question that most of us spend a lot of time on our devices each day. You may feel that this, in itself, isn't an issue. But you may be getting a little bored of simply scrolling through your newsfeed aimlessly while the minutes and hours tick by. It's so easy to fall into a habit of mindlessly scrolling through our phones. But when we do this, it can leave us feeling dissatisfied and unfulfilled. If you've noticed that you feel disengaged and completely unaware of the passing hours when scrolling through your phone, you might find it helpful to try something different. Rather than scrolling through your phone out of habit, why not turn this passive pastime into something more fulfilling?
The internet is packed with fascinating information and engaging content. So, there's no reason why using the web needs to be an uninspiring habit. Keep reading to discover how to get more from the time you spend online. Are you ready to leave behind mindless scrolling and maximize your time spent online? If so, here are some top tips to inspire you:
Engage With Others
If you spend lots of time scrolling through your social media feed, it's helpful to think about why you do this. For some people, constantly looking through social media can be a way to ease loneliness and feel some kind of connection to other people. If this sounds like you, you may find that a lot of your scrolling simply makes you feel worse. It can cause you to compare their seemingly perfect lives with yours. But don't forget, what you get to see is probably only the edited highlights of their lives. Instead, you may find that you get more of what you're looking for from your time spent online when you engage with others in a different way.
Thinking about which subjects you are interested in and feel passionately about is a great start. You may then want to join online forums and fan pages to chat with other people who share your same interests. This can help you to feel like you are part of a community and enable you to have meaningful conversations about your interests.
Chill Out While Keeping Your Brain Active
Many people go online as a way to relax. At the end of a stressful day, it can feel great to have a reason to simply sit down with your phone in hand and forget about the day. But there are plenty of other ways to chill out after a hard day. If you like the idea of keeping your brain engaged and active while your body relaxes, playing online games is a great way to do this.
Choosing to play online games that are fun, but also require you to think are a great place to start. Online crossword games are the perfect example of this. You will be able to engage your brain and keep your mind active while enjoying the fun challenge of completing the crossword. Although you'll still be relaxing, you will be able to forget about the day and focus your mind on something more positive, instead. Playing these types of online games is a great way to keep your brain busy and give it a workout. This could even help you to protect your brain health and is a handy tool in the battle against conditions such as dementia. So, there are plenty of good reasons to choose to play online games over mindless scrolling.
Overhaul Your Finances
If your aim is to make the hours you spend online as productive as possible, you may want to focus on your finances. While dealing with money matters isn't as exciting as playing online games, it can be a worthwhile area to focus on.
Spending some time combing through your finances while you're online can really help you take charge of your financial life. While it's vital to be careful when entering your personal details online, there are ways to save yourself money and overhaul your financial situation.
Managing your money online can take many different forms. You could begin by using comparison sites to see if it is possible to lower your bills. This is something that could help you to make big savings on your utility bills, car insurance, and home insurance. Even spending just one evening looking at ways to save on these essential bills can help you make some significant savings. You can follow this example for pretty much every aspect of your financial life, from your phone contract to your internet service provider.
Learn Something New
The internet may be populated with a lot of not so useful information, but there's plenty of valuable stuff on there too, just waiting to be discovered. You won't have to try too hard to find tutorials and online courses covering pretty much everything. From learning how to speak another language to developing the skills needed to entirely make over your home, useful information is right there at your fingertips.
Using your spare time to learn something new is always a good idea. It's a really valuable way to learn new skills that you can put to use in daily life. You can even develop skills that can be used to help you to save money. For example, learning how to complete tasks around the home yourself, such as decorating and carpentry tasks, can help you to save large amounts of money, as you won't need to hire professionals to complete these tasks.
Following tutorials to complete practical tasks isn't the only way to make the most of your time spent online. There's also plenty of opportunity to learn a new physical activity. Yoga, Pilates, indoor walking exercises, and tai chi are just some of the physical activities that you can learn online from the comfort of your own home. So, you can focus on your physical and mental wellbeing without even leaving the house.
Get Creative
You don't need to have a natural artistic flair to get a new creative hobby. You only need to search online, and you'll find thousands of step-by-step tutorials and videos to instruct you on how to get started with any creative hobby you can think of. Whether you've always wanted to try macrame, watercolor painting, or needlepoint, you will find all the information you need just a click away.
One of the best things about learning a creative skill online is you can work on it at your own pace. You can simply dip in and out of the content as and when you have time, so there's no pressure to hurry to develop your new skill in a set time. Instead, you can take your time and enjoy it.
Boost Your Qualifications
Are you keen to advance your prospects and take the next step on the career ladder? It's easy to feel like you're stuck in a job and feel unsure about how you're going to break free and progress your career to the next level.
No one wants to feel trapped in their job. Unfortunately, it can happen pretty easily when you've been in the same role for a while. However, making a conscious effort to find a way out of this situation is something that you can do while you're spending time online. There are lots of opportunities to give your qualifications a boost online. You could choose to take an online course to gain the knowledge and skills you need to go for that big promotion.
If you're keen to make a major change in your life, you could decide to take an online course and retrain in a completely different career.
Final Thoughts
There's a common misconception that time spent online is often time that's wasted. However, that doesn't need to be the case. Spending hours mindlessly scrolling and comparing your life to other people's is rarely a positive way to use your spare time. But, as we've shown above, there are tons of ways to get more from the time you spend online.
Whether you choose to overhaul your finances, learn a new skill, or keep your brain active by playing online games, there are plenty of constructive ways to spend your time on the internet.
