Days don’t get wasted in big chunks. They leak out five minutes at a time.

Nobody loses an afternoon in one decision. It goes in small unremarkable pieces: a check of your phone between tasks, a few minutes of nothing while you decide what to start, a conversation that ran long. None of those feel like waste, which is why they are so hard to catch, and why the evening total is such a shock.

Watch the gaps instead of the blocks. Give yourself a default for the in-between minutes, something you would rather have done than scrolled, and pick it before the gaps show up.