Is Wasted Time Really Wasted?

This magazine article from the Boston Globe brings up an important question: Is wasted time really wasted? At any moment in time you are doing something. People often say that they are not doing anything, but what they really mean is that they are not doing anything important. Sitting at my computer just now I tried to do nothing. I didn’t move, breathe, or think about anything. However, I was still sitting; I was in fact holding my breath; and by not thinking about anything, I was thinking to not think anything. Does this remind anyone of Ghostbusters?  It’s kind of like someone saying don’t think about pink elephants, and automatically a pink elephant jumps into your head.

It is easy to see that no matter how hard we try or don’t try, we are always in a state of being that proves we are doing something. And whatever it is we are doing has some sort of purpose. So we really have to look at what it is we are doing, and what we define waste to be.

So far we have assumed that wasting time is automatically a bad thing. In that we are assuming similarly to what Robin Abrahams brings up in her article that wasting time is doing something when we should or could be doing something more productive with our time.  However, are these things that we are doing instead of the things we should be doing benefitting us in some way? If so then I would say that we are not wasting time. I do agree that wasting time must be looked at in how a person approaches it. It is a relative relationship. If there is something we could be doing more efficient that would allow us to do more of the same thing in less time then something that we are doing is causing time to be wasted.

This is all very theoretical and philosophical, but the point is twofold. It is possible to do things in such a way that we can do more in less time. Also, if we do something that is less efficient, it is producing some other thing in our lives (whether that be fun, pleasure, rest, etc.) that is subtracting from the time and effort going to our goal. This article from the New York Times suggests that wasting time really depends on a person’s goal and what they want to do, should do, could do, etc.

This is similar to the law of conservation of mass stating that mass cannot be created or destroyed. When relating this to a person’s life, putting in time and effort produces intended results and unintended results, which we name waste. The amount of unintended results and intended results equals the amount of effort and time put in. 

A great personal example of this is when I was studying for an advanced calculus test yesterday. I put in hours of time reading my textbook, reviewing theorems, and memorizing postulates (time and effort). However after all of this I really do not feel that I came away with much knowledge or understanding of the material (intended results). A lot of the time that should have turned into understanding instead turned into frustration (unintended results). 

It may seem that when we put in our time and effort into something and we only get a small amount of our intended result, we have lost time and wasted effort. But these aren’t really lost or wasted; we just haven’t realized where they have gone.