James' World 2

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We spend a lot of energy looking for shortcuts to save time, and sure, those shortcuts add up. But when I look back, my biggest time regrets aren’t spending too much time on Twitter or mismanaging my daily tasks. Those are bad habits, but there are bigger, more systematic time wasters that have really gotten in the way. Fixing these will free up a massive amount of time and energy.

Not Asking for Help

My first week on my first job out of university, my boss handed me a huge spreadsheet. He told me to organize it in a way that made zero sense to me. Being a quiet, timid person, I simply nodded, walked back to my desk, and stared at that spreadsheet for like an hour, hoping to make some sense of it (yep, just like George Costanza and the Penske file).

Finally, my coworker came in, and I confessed I had no idea what to do. He broke it down for me, then dropped some advice that’s stuck with me ever since: “You might feel dumb asking questions, but you look dumber when you don’t get it because you failed to ask.”

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Not asking (one of many)

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The idea that materialistic values can obstruct our path to happiness dates back hundreds of years. The Buddha encouraged a balance between asceticism and pleasure; early Christian monasticism preached spiritual transformation through simple living; philosopher Lao Tzu warned that if you chase after money, “your heart will never unclench.”

Centuries later, the question of whether money can bring us happiness remains a subject of intense debate. After all, as our culture of consumption expands exponentially, our lives increasingly revolve around money-earning it, spending it, and saving it.

Consider the numbers. Between 1901 and 2003, U.S. household spending increased 53-fold, from $769 to $40,748 (that’s $2,000 in 1901 dollars). And what we spend on has also changed. Today, the average American family spends about 50 percent of their income on necessities like food and shelter, compared to almost 80 percent in 1901. That means more discretionary spending on consumer goods and services, including the 11.3 million tons of clothing and 27 million tons of plastics that end up in U.S. landfills every year.

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There are few aspects of life where you can fail seven out of 10 times and still be considered great at what you do. With a 30 percent score on the MCAT, you wouldn’t get into medical school. You’d likely lose money if you only won 30 percent of your Super Bowl bets. But in baseball, if you get a hit 30 percent of the time you step up to the plate, you might be headed to the Hall of Fame—and that’s because it’s perhaps the most difficult thing to do in any major sport.

Ted Williams, for instance, one of the greatest hitters to ever play Major League Baseball, finished his 19-year career playing for the Boston Red Sox with a .344 batting average. That’s a 34 percent success rate, tied for seventh-best in the sport’s history. But even he famously said that hitting a baseball is the hardest thing to do in sports. So why is that the case?

For one, the physics are extreme. The velocity of the average fastball in the Major Leagues is more than 90 miles per hour. When the ball whizzes in at that speed from less than 60 feet away, the hitter has about 150 milliseconds to decide whether they want to swing. That’s literally the blink of an eye.

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Batting

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We parents are trying our best, but sometimes — a lot of times — we fall short. That’s why it can be helpful to know some of the potentially damaging phrases parents often resort to without realizing their impact. It’s not about beating ourselves up. It’s about doing better by being a bit more conscious of our language.

So HuffPost Parents spoke with several experts who shared some harmful phrases you should try to erase from your vocabulary — and what to say instead.

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