Don’t know where the time is going? Meaningless activities could be consuming your time. Recognize these seven time-wasters, then adjust your habits.

The first step to a more mindful life is recognizing the roadblocks and detours that are holding you back from achieving your goals—and figuring out how to move past them.

Ever look back on a day and have no idea how you spent it? You’re not alone.

So many things can distract you, take up your time or interfere with your routine or plan for the day. Recognizing time-wasters is the first step to eliminating them from your life. After all, a mindless activity is the antithesis of living mindfully. To keep your day on track, learn to recognize these seven common diversions and regain control.

1. Notifications. Between the Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok and TeamSnap messages on your devices, notifications can instantly derail you from the task at hand, dragging out the process and delaying you from completion. To stay focused, mute your notifications or turn them off in your account settings on your phone; for your watch, you can mute specific apps or use the “do not disturb” feature to silence all notifications.

2. Email. Junk email can clog your inbox with useless messaging or tempt you to buy things you don’t need. To take back your inbox, set aside time each day to delete junk emails or simply unsubscribe. Too much back and forth over email can waste time, as well. Avoid open-ended scheduling questions and instead, send a list of available times and ask the recipient to choose. Limit email conversations to need-to-know. If the recipient isn’t waiting for a reply to act, don’t bother emailing back.

3. TV/Streaming. The original “screen,” TV often consumes many hours of people’s lives. To keep it in check, avoid binging shows, no matter how gripping. Be choosy about what you watch. Limit shows and movies to weekends and evenings. Or set a time limit of one to two hours of viewing per day.

4. Multitasking. Take on too many tasks at once, and you’ll cut down on productivity. Each time you switch from one thing to another, your brain takes a few seconds to transition and adjust. Depending on how many tasks you are juggling, those seconds can add up to a few hours a day. Instead, hunker down, concentrate and finish one project completely, then move to the next.

5. Disorganization. A messy car, desk, diaper bag, backpack or purse—they can all leave you wasting time digging and shuffling through to get to what you need. Plus, being disorganized can make it hard to prioritize things on your to-do list. Organization is not something you can tackle overnight, but starting to declutter, making to-do lists and breaking tasks into small chunks can be a good start.

6. The News. Whether positive or negative, news creates an emotional response that can be addictive, and it’s often coupled with the fear of missing a news story (aka FOMO). In times of disaster or conflict, consuming endless news cycles may also make you feel a loss of control. It’s important to remember that spending hours on end watching news is time you’ll never get back.

7. Social Media. Blessing or curse? It depends, of course. Scrolling through photos of videos of friends, family and complete strangers gives a quick surge of dopamine, which makes you feel good in the moment but leaves an empty and possibly inferior feeling in the long run. The average person spends nearly seven hours online per day, mostly on social media. It might be time to clean house: For each post on your feed, ask yourself—honestly—if it’s adding anything to your life. If not, unfollow ruthlessly. And take a big step back to evaluate whether social media is where you want to spend your time. One possible strategy is to limit social media interactions to short sessions or just a few times a day rather than continuously.

Being more mindful of where your time is going can help you spend your precious hours wisely, allowing you to choose and focus on activities that bring you the most joy and fulfillment and help you reach your goals.