Pearl Nash
Every smart woman knows better than to waste time—it’s precious, and is gone forever once lost.
That’s the reason why they’re so conscious about how they spend every minute and every hour of their day.
Want to be a bit smarter with how you spend your time?
Here are 15 things in life smart women never waste their time on.
1) Worrying
Smart women think of their future and try to plan ahead.
But worrying? Nah!
They know worrying is just a waste of time.
And if things are indeed going down in flames, they’d rather figure out how to make things better rather than worry.
2) Doing something they don’t really like
Smart women won’t start a project or apply for a job that they know they simply can’t stand.
They know that it will just end up mediocre or even awful. They know that they’ll lose motivation halfway through and that their apathy will be obvious in their output.
More than that, they’re sure it will end up making them miserable.
So they’ll spare themselves the agony and instead pursue things that they know they’ll enjoy—or, at least, not make them miserable.
3) Obsessing over their looks
Smart women care about their looks, make no mistake.
But they know better than to waste their time going on 20-step skincare routines, burning 3 hours at the gym daily, and calculating every calorie they eat.
Instead, they try not to overdo anything. They will just have the skincare basics (cleanse, moisturize, protect), they will spend an hour at the gym max, and they will just make sure they’re not eating junk.
More than that, they build up their own self-confidence and accept themselves as they are.
It’s cheaper, but it takes less time and is better for them in the long run.
4) Staying in a dead-end job
Smart women know their worth.
They know they deserve more than being stuck at a low-paying job for years on end or enduring a nasty boss.
They don’t treat their job like it’s something they need to dedicate their lives to. What matters to them is that it helps them achieve their goals and contribute to their self-growth.
So the moment they realize that their job isn’t making them grow anymore, they’ll start making plans to leave.
5) Worrying about what other people think of them
Smart women know that other people’s opinions of them are none of their business. And so they go “I don’t give a damn” and live in peace.
And they’re indeed smart for being this way.
Imagine the time we save and the stress we eliminate from our lives if we stop caring too much about how our in-laws or clients or colleagues or neighbors think of us?
Smart women have liberated themselves from the eyes of others…and this enables them to live a stress-free, authentic life.
6) Plotting revenge
Enemies? What enemies?!
Smart women always look forward—they know better than to hold a grudge on anyone who might have ever done them wrong.
They think that it’s a waste of time and energy to let other people occupy their thoughts, much less dedicate the time and energy to actually think of revenge.
So they shut those people out of their minds and instead focus on what’s actually important.
Think about it—if you know that someone is trash, why waste time thinking about it and keeping it around? It’s simply much better to dump them, forget them, and move on.
7) Dealing with toxic friends
How do smart women deal with toxic friends?
Simple—they cut them out.
Smart women will try to give people a chance, of course.
But if their friends have proven themselves to be genuinely toxic despite efforts to build bridges and clear things up, they’ll just go and find new friends instead.
They won’t waste their time trying to mend broken egos. They’re not going to spend hours begging, asking them “please let’s be okay again” or “what did I really do wrong?!”
It doesn’t matter if that person used to be important to them. They’ll instead work on moving on and finding better people.
8) Anger
Don’t get me wrong. Smart women do get angry—they’re still human, after all.
But they don’t wallow in it.
They let themselves feel angry for a moment or two, and then immediately work on flushing it out of their system.
This is one of the reasons why they don’t hold any grudges.
Where most people would nurse their anger until it turns into a grudge, smart women will instead try their best to address their anger in the healthiest way possible.
They’ll express themselves and try to come up with a resolution. And if things won’t work out, they let go and keep their distance.
9) Wallowing in self-pity
Yeah, things don’t always go as planned.
Even smart women end up falling in love with people who turn out to be jerks, put their trust (and money) in the wrong business partners, and waste their time pursuing the wrong things.
But what sets smart women apart from the rest is that they don’t beat themselves up and pity themselves endlessly.
They might cry and take their anger out on the nearest punching bag, sure. But they’ll always pick themselves back up and keep moving.
They might lose, but they refuse to stay defeated.
10) Chasing emotionally unavailable men
Some girls chase after men—wanting nothing more than to find a prince charming so that they’ll feel complete—even if that person happens to be emotionally unavailable.
Smart women know better than to do the same. They’ll pursue men, for sure, but only the ones worth pursuing.
That’s because they don’t NEED a man to live fulfilling lives, and are perfectly happy being single.
And when they do want to find a partner, they first make sure that there’s mutual trust and interest between the two of them. If they can tell that the other person’s just not interested in them, they’ll move on.
There are 8 billion people on Earth. Smart women don’t need to be good at math to figure out that the odds are always in their favor so long as they keep looking.
11) Gossip
If there’s anything smart women are bound to hate with a passion, it’s gossip.
Most people are drawn in by the thrill in knowing another person’s secrets.
But then how can they even be sure that what they’re hearing is true? And if it were even remotely true, what business do they have knowing about it?
Small minds discuss people, big minds discuss ideas, and smart women definitely have big minds.
They don’t see the point in wasting their own time and energy talking about the lives of others and would rather be doing other things instead—like being productive or having fun with their hobbies.
12) Trying to change someone
Everyone is different, and that sometimes means that the people we like can have habits or beliefs we don’t like.
Sometimes we fall in love with people who are almost perfect, and sometimes there’s just this thing called the “hero complex” that compels us to “save” another.
But only foolish people would waste their time and energy trying to change others.
Smart women know better!
They know that people won’t change unless they want to.
That’s why they’ll just accept people as they are, and if someone’s habits or beliefs are too much for them to ignore, they’ll just let them be.
13) Staying hopeful even things are clearly not working
Not everything we put our time and energy into is worth it. Sometimes things just don’t work out.
And yet many of us feel compelled to persevere even when it’s clear that things are going nowhere.
It’s understandable. We don’t want to surrender because giving up feels like a waste of all the effort we’ve put in it so far.
This is called the sunk-cost fallacy, and smart women know better than to be trapped by it.
Whether it’s their passion project, a business venture, or their relationship, they’re willing to cut their losses and move on if it’s clear that it’s not working out at all.
14) Spending too much time helping others
We all naturally love to help the people we care about.
But if we always say yes every time someone asks for our help, we’d have very little time and resources to spend on our own needs.
Smart women know this and while they will still help if they can, they don’t disregard their needs—they still have their own lives to live!
They’re not going to sacrifice their only day off in months just to help a friend who wanted help with a presentation—they’ll kick back and relax for once.
15) Trying to be perfect
We live in a society where women are told over and over again to be perfect.
Women are expected to keep their homes perfectly clean, to always have a perfect smile, a perfect body, and to always remain nice and calm even when things go bad around us.
The moment women express their frustrations, they get called dramatic.
And if they aren’t always smiling, they get called a bitch. If their homes are not flawless, they’re considered a slob.
But this is all exhausting, and the smart woman knows that she is not defined by what opinions people might have of her.
So she doesn’t try to be perfect. “Good enough” is good enough for her.
Final thoughts
As you might guess, it’s not like you can just immediately jump into doing things like a smart woman.
A lot of society—self-important men especially—likes to attack them for being so strong.
They get called things like “bitch” and get told that they’ll “grow old and lonely with only cats for company.”
But make no mistake. It’s best if everyone lives and thinks the way they do.
The secret to all this? Self-confidence.
Build that up, and soon you’ll find yourself being smart and confident and not wasting a single minute on nonsense.
