How to waste your time effectively

“Living’s mostly wasting time. I waste my share of mine
but it never feels too good, so let’s not take too long.”
– Townes Van Zandt –

Wasting time effectively is possible and it requires one thing and one thing only: awareness.

I gave myself the post title, “How to waste time effectively,” with no idea what I would write. But I liked the title and had a gut sense that there was something true about it. As I thought about what I would write, I came up with an alternate title, “Falling in love with the in-betweens,” and I liked that too, and in this case I knew what I meant.

Well, what on earth do I mean? The second title is the easiest to explain. The Townes Van Zandt song I quoted answers what I mean about falling in love with the in-betweens. The song is called, “To Live’s to Fly,” and the in-betweens are this:

Where you’ve been is good and gone
All you keep is the getting there

The in-betweens are the getting there. We often think in terms of goals and artifacts. The goal is what we hope to accomplish. The artifact is the end of the journey, the thing we create. It can be a work of art, a product we’ve developed, or the solution to a problem. Getting there is the process of arriving at these.

But what about that first title? What is “wasting time effectively?” What does that mean?

To start, it’s the getting there. The process.

The getting there

When we use the expression “wasting time” we’re never really talking about what we are doing. We are talking about what we are not doing. But I think sometimes that focusing on that keeps us from seeing that what we are doing is part of getting what we’re not doing done.

Wow! Could I be more convoluted? Let’s cross our fingers and see if I can explain myself.

Getting there is process. Sometimes process isn’t obvious. When it isn’t, we call it wasting time.

I think of wasting time as reconnaissance. I see it as information gathering. The fact that it’s fun doesn’t take away from its value. If anything, it adds to it. The problem is that it often occurs at a time when something else is pressing to get done. And (this is important) we’re not always aware that process is what we are doing.

So … Here are a few tricks to wasting time effectively:

•    Stop beating yourself up – we all waste time
•    Acknowledge and accept that you will waste time
•    Knowing you’ll waste time, try not to “take too long” – minimize it
•    Since you’re going to waste time, consider doing it productively – effectively

How in the world do I waste time effectively?

My first thought was to say to waste time on something worthwhile like studying the universe and quantum physics. But that seemed a bit stupid because, really, isn’t wasting time about indulging in something not particularly important?

Maybe it is, but not necessarily. My second thought, and the one I’m going with, is this: change the way you view what you’re wasting time on. Change how you think about it. Be aware.

Creation is about putting unrelated things together. Have a look at “Thoughtwrestling Interview – Whitefeather,” for an idea of what I mean. Hair and bone as art? Yes. Disparate elements, concepts and ideas become something new, in this case art (or, an artifact).

Wasting time does two things. First, it’s a way of removing yourself from stress and relaxing enough that your conscious brain is ready to take another shot at what you’re dealing with. Second, and significantly, it exposes you to things unrelated to what you are dealing with.

Put it this way: there is no way to know where the ideas that will help you will come from. You can’t expose yourself to everything but you can expose yourself to anything. This means they could be found in the most profound and the most trivial equally. What you expose yourself to is less important than the fact you expose yourself to something – anything.

(It’s a common Hollywood plot device. Ever see an episode of House? He faces a problem that is getting increasingly desperate for a solution. He is talking to another character about something completely unrelated. The other character says something inconsequential and suddenly House’s eyes widen as he sees the solution.)

The hard part of wasting time

Knowing when to stop is the hardest part of wasting time. There are few things as seductive as time wasting. Even when you know it’s time to stop, actually stopping is hard. Very hard. In fact, maybe I should have said the hardest part is making yourself stop – knowing when to stop is probably pretty easy by comparison.

What’s the solution to that problem? Honestly, I don’t know. I think it depends a lot on the person and who they are, but certainly strategies could be used. But again, how well they work depends on the individual. And they are dependent on awareness. Some could be:

• Literally set a time limit and use an alarm or some other alert
• If you’re in a relationship, ask your partner to help – even to nag you, if necessary (depends upon the people, of course)
• Create a charity jar and put a set amount ($5 or $10) for every half hour you spend “wasting time” – make the amount significant to you so that it makes you sweat a bit
• Categorize wasting time into types (for example: activity, relaxation, relational – see the post, Develop the creative infrastructure for thoughtwrestling and the references to creative infrastructure and sub-systems, e.g. relational might be mentorship)
• Set deadlines

In the end, my points are this: 1) wasting time isn’t always a bad thing – it’s a necessary part to creativity and finding solutions, 2) the trick is to know when to stop and return to the job at hand, and 3) the hard part is always the stopping. But everything depends on being aware of what you are doing.

I’m full of lyric quotes these days so let me wrap with yet another, this time from the Eagles’ song, “Wasted Time”:

So you can get on with your search, baby, and I can get on with mine
And maybe someday we will find, that it wasn’t really wasted time.

Related:

• 14 Ways To Procrastinate Productively (Pick the Brain – pickthebrain.com)