Help me avoid meaningless moves

Hi there! I often find myself playing a game like this, and I was hoping someone more experienced might have some suggestions what to do in those situations where I don't quite know what to do and make a meaningless move. I'm White playing an opponent with a slightly lower rating.

i agreed with most of your thought process. Getting your knight to d6 would be great and could be done, instead of Nf3 on move 30 you could have played Nf1 then Ng3. And hopefully Nf5 eventually which is the only way of getting to d6!

With 2 minutes on the clock its very tough to play a good game (I often run unto  time trouble) and i would almost surely accept the draw here, as winning this game in 2 minutes would be quite hard and mistakes will be made. I prefer white at the end of the game. 

Thank you for your response.  In retrospect I believe the only reason I played 30.Nf3 was to threaten the rook, which was, of course, pretty useless.  It's sort of like a very inexperienced player will like to give check even if it doesn't really achieve anything.