If time and energy vampires are leeching away your physical and emotional reserves, it’s time to trade them out for more constructive influences and activities.

Do you go to “hang out” aimlessly with friends?

Do you poison your mood by fighting with people on the internet?

Do you evaporate your time looking at viral content on facebook?

If you are guilty of these success killing habits, I want you to know they are destructive and it’s time to break the addiction.

I wasted a lot of time doing just these things.

I used to live in a party house when I was starting my business. It was the most fun place I ever lived. We goofed around a lot, partied a lot, watched sports, went out, it was great fun.

What it wasn’t good for was my business.

Eventually we all went our separate ways. I think we all realized that what we were doing wasn’t healthy and it wasn’t helping us with our careers or making us better people.

After I moved out I started focusing much more on my business and my business improved dramatically. My business just about doubled two years in a row after I left.

Maybe you have friends who are a bad influence on you. Maybe you have friends who are “energy vampires.”

If you do have these kinds of toxic people in your life, you may want to step back from them a bit. Fill that time with people who can have a more positive influence on you.

Another negative time and energy vampire that I had to cut out of my life was an internet message board I participated in.

I used to run a boxing message board and participated with the same group of boxing fans for over 10 years. It was a lot of fun to be on there, however it was a toxic environment.

We would frequently attack and provoke each other. It took a lot of energy to participate there. Energy I could and should have used more constructively.

Since I quit participating on that site I’ve been able to grow this website and I have big plans for it. I want to make it the best and largest marketing and business education website for chiropractors.

If I was still participating there, I probably wouldn’t have gotten this website running so fast.

The third huge time waster is facebook.

Despite my best attempts to avoid facebook, I log in almost daily. I participate in some marketing groups and a chiropractic group on facebook. I also do a lot of advertising on facebook so I have to be there.

Inevitably I get pulled into the stories my friends are posting. They’re called “viral” for a reason. They’re hard to resist.

It’s really easy to get pulled into the stories there and waste an hour or two.

Now, I limit myself to half an hour to check my ads and post / reply to my groups, usually every other day. I have my ad copy already written out so I can punch it in really quick and be done with it.

I’ve also unfollowed a lot of people on facebook, just so I don’t get angry at their posts. The thing I don’t like about facebook is you are “supposed” to friend your friends.

In reality I have like six friends. Six that I talk or text with regularly and see frequently. The majority of my friends on facebook are neither friends nor acquaintances. Many of them I haven’t seen since high school. Most of them I don’t care to interact with. Why should I waste my time looking at their posts?

I shouldn’t, is the point. Neither should you. Only surround yourself with uplifting energy producing things. If facebook lifts your mood, then maybe it is right for you. However, it deserves some careful thought.

I like twitter a lot more. Twitter lets you follow anybody you want. I follow smart and influential people and it gives me a little energy boost and a smile every time I go there.

You can follow me on twitter at @realAlexWiant. There are a lot of fake Alex Wiants out there so I had to make a clear distinction which one is the real me.

So, now that you have all this extra time, what are you going to do with it? What have you wanted to do yet just not had enough time?

Tell me in the comments below.