Wasting Time
I called my friend today and asked if he needed a ride to get his car. I hung out with him the night before and he had a few. Although he wasn’t drunk, legally it may have been a few too many so, in the interest of caution, he took an Uber home. On the ride to get his car I asked if he spent the morning working on any of the projects we talked about the prior night. My friend’s response surprised me. He said he spent the morning playing video games. When I asked which one, he told me it was one of those mindless collectathon type games. For those not into video games, these are games where the players spend a great deal of their time at what’s known as grinding, i.e. the gameplay is mostly menial mindless tasks where the goal is to level up the player’s avatar. They can be addictive but don’t really offer anything other than mindless activity.
I have to admit, I was surprised. Considering all the things my friend wanted to accomplish, I asked why didn’t he do any of his projects? He had several hours that morning to do a bunch of different things. The response I got was that they just wanted to waste time until their partner got home, and video games were a good way to waste time. I countered that video games can be high art, they can have a great story like any high quality TV show or movie. Game writers often use characters and events to make some form of commentary that is worth contemplating. That’s why I play them. To experience an engrossing story and / or a unique world. I got an unconvincing shrug out of my friend and he told me even the ones I like were just there to waste time. To his credit I’m sure many people would agree. Still this conversation brought up a bigger question. Why do so many people purposefully want to waste time with useless and meaningless activity?
So a bit about me. I have to keep moving. I like to be productive. Even at things that aren’t significantly or immediately beneficial. As an example, I’m spending much of my time right now ripping my physical CD collection so I can get rid of it. Normally I wouldn’t do that, but we are fast approaching a time where there are no disc readers in the household. Even cars have mostly given up on the venerable CD player. So my 30+ year old CD collection is mostly useless. Since I don’t keep them on display, and I can’t use them, it makes no sense for me to keep them. I built a PC with an old DVD drive so I could rip the collection. Once this tedious process is over, and I know my rips work, then I’ll give away or sell the majority of my collection. I have to admit I’m still fighting my emotional attachment to them but I do think that there is truth that the less stuff we have, the simpler our lives can be.
The CD collection exercise is a perfect example of how I like to keep busy by being productive. It’s a great activity for when I don’t have anything else planned. Another benefit is the immediate gratification. At the end of a day I can visually see how the piles of CD’s I have left to rip are physically getting smaller. Technically is this wasting time? I don’t think so because it could be argued that by removing clutter from my life, I’m improving the quality of it, even if it’s in a very minor way.
Now, let’s look at another activity I engage in. Like my friend, I like to play video games. Unlike my friend, I don’t like to play mindless activity games where you spend your time grinding. I’ve played a few of them. After a very short period of time I find that I’m getting annoyed at how meaningless they seem. This is why I’ve assiduously avoided games like World of Warcraft, where a huge component of playing is grinding to level up your character.
So I have to do something. What I don’t get is people like my friend, people who like to do nothing. To waste time on purpose. I see them every year during our family trip to the beach. They sit there on the beach doing nothing but relaxing and sunbathing. I hear them in the office, when you ask what they have planned for their vacation or for the weeknd. They will happily tell you “Absolutely nothing”.
Now I’m not immune to the feelings of not wanting to do anything. The human animal needs down time. Time to relax and recharge our bodies. I get that. I’m not talking about watching T.V. after a long day at work or school as your biological clock enters its rest phase. That’s something that everyone needs and it’s something I experience at the end of a long day. I’m also not talking about being ‘trapped’ somewhere. Holidays are a good example of this. I can recall many vacations where I’m visiting family or I’m on a trip that’s more for my kids than it is for me. I’ll have several hours that need to be filled and limited ability to be productive. This is when time wasters come in handy, where they have a purpose.
The question I have for this article is about people who have down time and like to sit and piddle it away with meaningless activities that are in no way productive. I don’t understand why this is something they look forward to. To me, wasting time is, well, it’s a waste. It’s a waste of opportunity. The way I see it is that we only have so many days on this earth. If you think about it, we have even less usable time than the chronological days in our lives. The human animal ages. As we get older there are things we can not do no matter how much we would want to. As an example, no matter how much I want to, I’ll never be able to go bowling again. Throwing that ball one time will result in days of back pain for me.
I don’t think we should ever knowingly waste time. Time is too valuable. You can’t get time back. So, by that logic, every single minute should be carefully considered. Even our rest time. The things we do when we are tired and in ‘recharge mode’ should be something that benefits us in some way other than ‘wasting time’. This is probably why I always feel a sense of anxiety when I’m somewhere in which I can’t be productive. It can get overwhelming for me, although I know I’m very much in the minority.
So what do you do when you don’t feel like doing anything and you just want the time to go by? When you are in your home environment the answer is easy. Simply do something, even lighter duty things, that can enhance your life. My CD burning is one example. When it’s done, I’ll have more cabinet space where I was keeping my CD’s, I’ll have more money from the ones that I’ve sold, and I’ll have made another friend of mine who collects CD’s very happy because of the additions I’m giving him for his collection. If you are having trouble getting started, then the secret is to do one very small thing. In my case it’s burning one CD. If I didn’t have a CD project I could write down an idea for an article, or maybe pick up some dust from my floor. One little step will lead to two, and two will lead to three. Then, before you know it, you look up and you actually did something that enhanced your life even in a small way.
But what about those down times like my aforementioned family vacation? Where you have nothing to do and have time to blow. I think we are fortunate in that we live in an age where we can bring productivity with us. Virtually every human being on earth has a smartphone and every smartphone has accessibility to the unlimited information of the world. We can leverage these devices to be productive in some small way. We can plan for the future. We can research something we’ve wanted to understand better. We can use the time to connect with the greater world in some way. There are virtually unlimited things we can do with the super computers that are in our pockets.
Time is valuable. It’s not just valuable, it’s priceless. When our time is up, it’s up. No and’s, if’s or but’s. Like any resource that’s impossible to replace, we should never knowingly and purposely waste it. Yet that’s what my friend did and it’s what millions of people do every day. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to wrap my head around that. I know I’ll never knowingly waste time. My personality won’t allow me to do it. I’m clearly in the minority as some people are not just ok with it they look forward to it. To those people, I can only say fight that urge as hard as you can. I’ve never known someone who got something done, even a menial task, and then said “wow I wish I threw that time away doing nothing and still had that task to do.” They may wish they didn’t have to do the task, but once something is accomplished, even a little thing, the feeling you get can’t be replaced with all the time wasting in the world. So if you have down time, then I say go do something of value, anything. Even something small. You won’t regret it. The opposite is true if you do waste that time, at some point, you will definitely regret it!
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