We Should All Waste More Time

What was your gut reaction when you read the title of this post? Did you feel unaccountably uncomfortable? Did the judgy part of you clear her throat? In our culture we are given two ideological choices of how to use time: wisely, or wastefully. One good, one bad. When I first started wasting time as an intentional personal practice (yes, you read that right), I felt like a bad person. I felt lazy, ungrateful, spoiled…all the negative things we’re taught to think about people who don’t diligently apply themselves to getting it all done. The indoctrination runs deep. See if you can complete any of the following:

Early to bed, early to rise…
Strike while the…
Pull yourself up by your…
Idle hands are…

You probably know at least one – we memorize such sayings in childhood. There are hundreds more, proliferating everywhere from your Facebook feed to the walls of your workplace or gym. They glorify our cultural approbation of hard work, getting ahead, and keeping busy, and structure our understanding of how we should conduct our lives. Industrious activity is seen as the way to succeed, but it’s more than that. It’s ingrained in us as a moral virtue. People who work hard are good people; we admire them. We believe they should be rewarded because they deserve to be.

Think about how we talk about not getting things done. It always carries a stigma. It was an unproductive day. I lazed about. I did nothing. Is it even possible to communicate this in an unequivocally positive way? The best we can do is something like, It was a restful day. But even then, we’re doing something of value – we’re resting so we can be ready for more work. Wasting time feels bad because we’re supposed to feel bad about it.

This is why we have a cult of busy. Creating busyness in our lives makes us feel like we are one of the good people, and it allows us to signal our worthiness to others. Busyness is a social status symbol and a way of self-medicating difficult feelings regarding our own value. How much busy is ideal? Being a little too busy. The kind of busy that you can show off with that tone of light exasperation everyone instantly recognizes: I’m just so busy, I barely have a moment to myself! Feeling that overwhelm – or giving the impression of it – is how we know we are part of the cool kids’ club (cult) of busy.

That’s bullshit. Being too busy isn’t a badge of honor. It just means you overscheduled yourself. Of course some of the ways our time gets used are out of our control, but we all can make choices about how busy we want to be. Sometimes those choices are hard, and you have to make sacrifices. People who say they wish they weren’t so busy are really saying that they’re too scared to make those changes. They don’t know how to exist without busy.

I started a personal practice of wasting time because I wanted to stop feeling that overwhelm of having to get all the things done. I wanted to cure my burnout. But I realized the practice had a larger value than just changing my own life. Intentionally wasting time is a radical rebellion in the face of our cultural indoctrination. It’s a rejection of the societal moralizing (laziness is a sin) and the capitalist valuation of human activity (time is money) that keep many of us from living our best lives. We all know the world is changing, that we’re entering a new era politically, economically, and culturally. It’s time to examine and subvert our limiting indoctrinated beliefs.

So how do you intentionally waste time? Here’s how I start. Whenever that anxiety comes on that I should be getting all the things done, I sit. I do nothing. I don’t try to use the time to meditate or “rest.” I sit and stare at a wall or out a window and let my mind wander, and sometimes I switch on a tv show as background static. I sit through that urgent feeling that there are all these things I need to do and the accompanying discomfort of leaving them undone. I tell myself that the urgency isn’t real, and that most of these things don’t actually need to get done at all. Eventually my mind always comes to rest on something I want to do. And I do that thing.

This practice helps fill my life with spirit-sustaining activities to the detriment of soul-destroying busywork. Like any mindful practice it can be challenging, but you will begin to see changes in your approach to life if you stick with it.