Do you niggle?
Niggling is spending time and energy in nonstrategic, unhelpful, or mindless actions. It’s the opposite of living intentionally.
Here’s a definition:
Niggle: 1: to spend too much effort or give too much attention to minor details. To work in an ineffective way. 2: to criticize about small or petty details
Example: She niggled endlessly over the best definition of niggle.
Synonyms include: potter, piddle around, idle, dawdle, fritter away
To look at it from a different angle, we niggle when we don’t get much return on investment for the time and energy we are using up. I don’t want to look back on my day or my week (or my entire quarantine) and realize I’ve spent most of it niggling rather than doing things that matter.
How about you?
5 ways I niggle away my time
Spending too much time on tiny details.
Aka Perfectionist niggling. When we look at a project through the lens of perfectionism, we can spend hours tweaking the little details to get something just right. Doing a job well is good, but the intentional person knows when something is good enough so they don’t waste time niggling over details when that time could be better spent working on another, more important task.
An example: I try to make eye-catching images for my blog posts, but graphic design is not a particular skill, nor is it the main purpose of my blog. Sometimes I find myself fiddling over small details on a graphic and realize I’m spending way more time on it than I should. So I call it good enough and move on to the next project.
Using busywork to avoid a difficult task
Aka procrastination niggling. When we find ourselves reorganizing the sock drawer or dusting the baseboard behind the bookcases, we are either involved in major spring cleaning or we are looking for tasks to keep us busy in order to avoid something more important. This kind of niggling allows us to feel productive while actually doing unproductive work. At the end of the day we may be tired but we’ve not accomplished much of value.
An example of this is sorting through paperwork and filing things in order to avoid starting on a project that has me feeling overwhelmed.
Getting sidetracked during a project
Aka bunny trail niggling. Sometimes we get distracted from our main task: we get a phone call, we notice that article we we’ve been meaning to read, we remember that picture we wanted to hang, etc. Our attention shifts to the secondary task, and from there it may follow a bunny trail of additional secondary tasks—all of which are non-strategic and all of which steal time from what you really planned to accomplish.
I have a particular problem with this when I am cleaning. I carry something to another room and then spot something else I need to take care of, so I pick that up and carry it somewhere, at which point I notice something else. Before I know it, I’ve forgotten all about task #1 and I find myself niggling over photo frames in the bedroom when I’m supposed to be setting the dining room table for guests. Oops.
Getting sucked into time-wasters.
Aka mindless niggling. We all have certain activities that suck us into spending way more time than we had planned. Like those addictive games on our phones. Or browsing social media. Or Sudoku puzzles. We all need time for relaxing and restorative activities, but mindless niggling is not the same as quality relaxation.
An example: A few years back I discovered a game called Fowl Words. The goal was to type as many words as possible from the letters given within a certain time. If you succeeded you went to the next level. And the next. And the next… All the way to level 100 and beyond. Let’s just say I frittered away more hours than I would like to admit playing it. Eventually I made myself STOP altogether in order to quit wasting time.
Fixating on stupid things.
Aka obsessive niggling. Sometimes we get ourselves stuck in a mental rut. We obsess on a certain news story. We suddenly decide to redecorate the guest room for no good reason and spend hours searching for furniture that we don’t need and probably won’t buy. We spend hours researching something to prove to someone that WE WERE RIGHT!
When we get fixated on something it’s easy to lose sight of our goals, purpose, and priorities–and when we forget those things we don’t make the best use of our time.
With everyone’s life out normal these days, I bet I’m not the only one who has trouble with niggling away my time. Which of these do you find the most problematic in your life? How do you overcome your tendency to niggle?
