If I add this small wasteful activity up for a year...

Often, to get proper perspective, we need to zoom to a higher perspective to see what we are doing.

For instance, if you look at something in terms of how much time it will take over a year, you might see something like this:

Daniel talks to an acquaintance from childhood who is not really in his current life, lives far away, but calls Daniel to just express his thoughts, to have someone to talk to, often on subjects of little relevance to Daniel.  But he takes his calls, which can easily last past an hour.

He spends upwards of 100 hours in a year with this minor little distraction during the week.

The question that might be asked:  "Is there another way I could spend that 2 1/2 full time 40 hour weeks?  What could I do that would have more value?"  

And then he might make the choice in an intelligent, thoughtful way, instead of letting his life slip away with a lot of very minor, low value activities, normally categorized as "distractions".