 Back when I was still a teen, we used to believe we had all the time in the world. Who would spend so much time attending parties and wondering whose house we would visit next? Years later, most of us have regrets about the past and wish we had invested our time rightly back then. As a young person, you have so much time in your hands now that if you don't use them wisely, you might step into your future wondering why you don't have the kind of success most of your mates then have. In today's video, I'll be sharing with you five ways you may be wasting your time now and how you can avoid that. If you are new here, do subscribe to our channel so you don't miss other interesting videos like this. One, doing what others are doing. I live in Nigeria, West Africa, and as at the time I wrote the script for this video, there is the COVID-19 pandemic in the air. When most businesses took to heat because of this pandemic, I saw how quite a number of people started to indulge in one business, making face masks. Very little time had passed before almost everyone started to make face masks for sale. Now, people producing face masks are so many. You don't even need to go far before you get one. Sadly, in spite of market saturation, a lot of people are still going into this business. The reason is simple. Most people are too lazy to think. Robert Kiyosaki, the author of Rich Dad Poor Dad, said, most people are too lazy to think. They keep thinking the same thought and never learn anything new. Those who are only interested in copying what others are doing will never rise. Doing what others are doing may not be limited to business. Most people are so committed to the status quo, they will never rise above it. At the time when I gave up on following the wrong friends as a young person, I knew people who chose to remain with their group of bad friends. Such people never rose. You should never apologize for living the life you want to live. You should never have an apology for choosing to give up some unprofitable relationships just to follow your dreams. Since your dreams won't achieve themselves, you're not under the obligation to do what others are doing, to go where others are going, or to copy their examples. People may hate you for not being like them, but in the end, the ones who are relevant among them will see your success for what it is and would cooperate with you later. 2. Waiting to be perfect. For a long time, I wanted to become a writer, but I was unsure I could ever be one. I had read the works of too many authors and writers and imagined I could never be that good. I was always waiting to be perfect, until I read a quote by author Jeff Goins, which says something like, nobody will give you the permission to be who you are supposed to be. You have to take that permission. Up till tomorrow or next year, you will never be perfect. When I started to write, I looked at what I wrote in the beginning after a year, and I was surprised I had written something like that. They weren't perfect, but moments of being committed to practicing every day, even though I wasn't good enough, had soon made me good enough. Nobody becomes anything great overnight. Nobody becomes anything great by being perfect first. We never become perfect. We only keep striving towards perfection. The more you work, the more you learn. The more you learn, the closer to being perfect you become. 3. Loving pleasure. Let me say this. If you love pleasure, you will never be successful. That's a fact. In a day when you have so much access to spending hours on social media, watching movies and boundless entertainment, I have seen young people invest themselves in this kinds of pleasures. The reason they do this is simple. Most have not found work that engages them enough. When you discover work that you enjoy doing, you will be too busy working and having fun while you work, that you will not even have time to do all the other things or this cold fun. It isn't that you won't do all those other things, but there will never be a priority on your plate. And oftentimes, I have found that my work can be so interesting and fun, I don't even have time for entertainment. This may sound out of place, but if your job isn't entertaining enough, you may need to check another endeavor. When you find work that you enjoy doing, you will be too busy engaging your work, you don't even have time for movies and unproductive hours on social media. 4. Working only to make money. I know people who work so hard to make money, but never made money. I know people whose goal is always to keep doing everything they can to make money, but never do. The reason they will make the money they're pursuing is simple. When you work only to make money, you're wasting your time. If you don't know how to handle money, you could never know how to make money and keep making money. I told the story of how T. Harv Ecker overcame poverty to become a millionaire. He was very hardworking and was doing all he could to make money, but he was constantly broke and eventually had to live with his parents. When things got worse, he soon learned that pursuing money wasn't the way to become wealthy. Rather, you could never become wealthy when your mindset about money is trashy. You're as rich or as wealthy as your mindset about money is. So, successful people experience repeated success because of their money mindsets, with a mindset that constantly attracts money. They could never stop making money. Thus, as beautiful as making money is, spend much time building your mindset about money. Invest your time in becoming, not in having. Those who strive to have but never become often return to having nothing, but because success is a journey, not a destination. Those who develop themselves to have a successful mindset enjoy repeated success. You can never rise beyond the condition of your mindset. 5. Banking on lock. Someone told me long ago that poverty is a choice, that people are mostly poor because they made that choice. As a result, I made the choice that I would never be poor. I am not going to run around desperately for money. I am not going to seek shortcuts for money. I am not going to do unethical things to make money. But, like I learned from another successful entrepreneur long ago, there are two things you should be investing in to secure your future financially. What makes you money now, and what will make you money in the future? If you aren't doing either of those two, or even both, you're wasting your time. I live in a country where most people bank so much on lock. Most have been taught hard work isn't all that matters. God's blessings makes all the difference. As much as I believe in God's blessings. I also believe God doesn't bless laziness. If you don't use what you have been given to the maximum, you will never get. You already have all you need to become all you want. So, waiting to get lucky is planning to fail. If you are preparing to succeed, but you aren't getting up day and night to get your life into success, you will surely step into failure. Luck is always preparation meeting opportunity. Author and prolific motivational speaker Les Brown said, It is better to be prepared for an opportunity and not have one, than to have an opportunity and not be prepared. You don't get successful by luck. You prepare hard to be successful, then you hit your lock. 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