Mining is not a waste of time if you don't have some btc to throw at the coin. Everyone's situation is different. In my case it made more sense for me to mine btc and use that that buy the nrs. At the time that worked for me.

First off, set up and auto payment with your pool. This way if something goes wrong you don't lose it all.

Second, get those coins into a wallet if you want stake! If they are just sitting in the pools wallet, guess who is getting the stake..? Actually, that is interesting and i never thought of that. The cynic in me thinks that the pool makes out then as they can search for pof mined transactions and deduct those from the wallet if it has any and still have it balance out. Might as well be in your pocket. If it was on an exchange, maybe leave it there if you plan to trade with it, but just sitting in a pool, cash out.