Wasting time

What does it mean to waste time? Laura offers a new definition of what it means to be productive.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Good morning, This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.
Every weekday morning, I'll be sharing a strategy to help
you take your day from great too awesome. In future
episodes we'll dive right into the tips, but in these
first few episodes, I'm introducing myself and talking about why

(00:23):
time matters and what time management really means. Today, I
want to talk about wasting time. What does it mean
to waste time, how does it happen? What should we
do about it? Different people have different definitions. Generally, wasting
time sounds like a bad thing. You're squandering something precious,

(00:46):
but precisely because it has a negative connotation, some people
like to show how clever and contrary they are by
assigning a certain romanticism to wasting time. Spend enough time
online and you'll notice that a lot of these people
write very similar essays. They proudly note that they don't
buy into puritan notions that all time must be productive.

(01:08):
They describe a scene of them doing some allegedly frivolous thing,
staring at the clouds. Oh, the world groans in protest,
but our essayist is proud of such wasted time. Some
of this writing is much better than others. It's also
got a lot of historical precedent. When I first started
writing about time management, a friend sent me John Keats's

(01:31):
poem Owed on Indolence, which was written in eighteen nineteen.
He talks of being visited by the shadow of ambition,
but sending her off, noting that you cannot raise my head.
Cool bedded in the flowery grass, Keats just wants to
lie there staring up at the sky, to which I

(01:52):
say great. I think taking breaks to clear our heads
as smart. If we took breaks by going outside and
staring at the clouds, we would be rejuvenated and energized.
That's not wasted time at all. Unfortunately, when most of
us take breaks, what we do is read arguments between

(02:12):
people calling each other names on Twitter, or we look
at photos on Facebook of people we didn't like in
high school. Anyway, we don't emerge inspired. So I want
to offer a different definition. Being productive means spending your
time in ways that are meaningful or enjoyable for you

(02:32):
or the people you care about. Wasting time means spending
time in ways that aren't advancing you towards the life
you want. This definition sounds reasonable at first blush, though
if you think about it, it's kind of radical. All
sorts of things that sound productive don't meet this definition.

(02:54):
Spending an hour before bed picking up toys that will
just come out again the next morning is wasted time
unless you really love doing it. If you don't love it,
you would have been better off doing something you would enjoy,
like reading a book. Under this definition, work is responsible
for all sorts of wasted time. For instance, I firmly

(03:15):
believe that the point of a meeting is to change
something in the world. So if that Tuesday morning staff
meeting changes nothing beyond rendering everyone in the room ninety
minutes older, that is wasted time. Email can be like
this too. In Juliett's School of Possibilities, my time management fable,

(03:36):
the main character falls into the trap of responding to
all emails as quickly as possible. This seems productive, but
of course it isn't, because the reason so many people
email her is that they think she has good ideas.
Her obsession with her inbox crowds out all time to
think up the good ideas that will serve her clients,

(03:57):
So this is wasted time. This is a tough definition,
but don't feel bad by this definition. Most of us
waste tons of time. I know I do. I spend
all kinds of time on things that don't feel particularly
meaningful or enjoyable to myself or the people I care about,

(04:19):
or like Twitter. They feel enjoyable for the first three minutes,
but not the next forty five. Thanks to the screen
time feature on the iPhone, I am now confronted with
my statistics un wasted time in a little moment of
reckoning every Sunday morning. Since I study my time, I
know what leads to these Internet rabbit holes, or to

(04:41):
time spent puttering around the house moving paper from one
pile to another. It's actually a bit of a paradox.
I think most of us waste time because we assume
we have no time. Because we assume we have no time,
we don't think about what we like to do with it.

(05:01):
When a spot of time does appear, we do the easiest,
most effortless thing, which is often picking up the phone
or some other pointless means of busting boredom. When I
think about it, then I do better. If I'm facing
an empty weekend afternoon of sibling squabbles, I load everyone

(05:23):
in the car and go to the y m c
as indoor pool, or after the kids go to bed,
I make sure I have a really good book, so
this low energy time can be spent on something slightly
more edifying than Twitter insults. Thinking about time is the
antidote to wasting time. You can think I'd like to

(05:46):
go lie cool, bedded in the flowery grass, just like
John Keats, and then go do it and enjoy yourself immensely.
That's not wasting time at all. This is Laura. Thanks
for listening. Here's to making the most of our time. Hey,

(06:10):
everybody got a tip or a question. You can share
them with me on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram at Before
Breakfast Pod that's be the number four then Breakfast p
o D. You can also email me at Before Breakfast
Podcast at iHeart media dot com. For the email, just
spell those words out. I look forward to connecting and

(06:32):
learning how you make the most of your time.