Why (and How) I Started Wasting My Time Again

I remember the moment when my first major mindset shift happened with regards to how I use my time.

It was about seven or eight years ago, while watching an interview with Warren Buffet.

He was asked why one of the wealthiest men alive is still living in his hometown, and even in his old house from decades ago.

His answer was something along these lines:

"It’s a 7-minute drive from my house to my office. Why would I go live in a new, bigger house and drive 30 minutes to my office? Or move to a big city and spend hours in traffic? The only thing that I would get out of that is that I would spend so much time listening to music in my car that I would know a lot of songs by heart. I don’t need that."

That was a big moment for me. I realized that there are people out there who are extremely conscious of and careful with how they spend their time. That’s when the shift happened for me, and I decided to start doing the same.

Soon after this, I found myself in a situation where I was spending anywhere between 40 minutes and one and a half hours per day in traffic. I wasn’t a multi-billionaire investor, and I wasn’t able to arrange my life so that I didn’t need to spend time in traffic, but there were things that could be done. I decided not to spend that time listening to music or even talking to other people who were traveling with me. I would only listen to audiobooks. That’s pretty much where my journey of productivity and efficiency started.

After listening to audiobooks every time I was in traffic or walking somewhere, I noticed a new opportunity to use my time more efficiently: while having my meals. Most of you reading this will probably be able to relate to the fact that, due to our modern lifestyle, the family is rarely able to sit down and have a meal together, so you eat the majority of your meals alone. And I think I would be right to say that almost no one actually sits down to have that meal alone in silence. People watch a Netflix show, YouTube videos, or just scroll through Instagram. So once again, I decided that I should not waste this time but use it efficiently. While I’m eating, I will listen to an audiobook, an online lecture, or an educational podcast – that was the rule I set for myself.

I kept finding opportunities to spend my time more efficiently, and soon I came to the point where, except for the first hour of my day that I managed to save for complete silence, not a single part of my day, no matter how small, was spent doing nothing, listening to nothing, or reading nothing. No time was wasted.

Well, after years of living this kind of life, I am learning once again to waste my time, and it’s turning out to be one of the best things I could’ve done for myself.

Now, the point of the rest of this text is not to bash on those different methods of time-management and that way of life as a whole, because they have clearly helped me progress in my life. But I do want to talk about how being obsessed with these things and taking them to an extreme is almost as bad as not caring at all about how you spend your time.

I don’t know if it started happening recently or if I finally started noticing it, but all this "efficiency" was hurting the development of my mind and, I would dare say, my soul. I wasn’t able to hear myself as well as I used to.

Maybe I finally noticed it because, after years of reading them, the words of Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, and Thoreau finally reached me. Even back in the 19th century, these great thinkers noticed that people would use being busy, productive, and efficient as a way of escaping from themselves.

Even last year, I talked on my Instagram page about learning to, once again, have a meal in silence if I’m eating alone. I have to admit that, over the past year, I didn’t do a great job of dropping the habit of audibook/online lecture/podcast listening while eating.

However, in the last couple of months, I’ve been making significant improvements in learning to "waste" my time.

Since I recently relocated to a city where I frequently use public transportation, the first step was to make a deal with myself not to do anything while riding. I either look through the window or at the people around me (in a non-creepy way).

The next thing was not to listen to anything while walking down the street. Even though it wasn't the sound of birds or the ocean, but rather the sounds of hundreds of cars, I decided to listen to my surroundings rather than something that would help me spend my time more efficiently.

And, finally, I started having meals in silence or while looking at the people on the street.

I gave myself the freedom to waste time.

The result was that, almost instantly, I started thinking more clearly. I was able to listen to myself better. My creativity surged.

And the practical side of this result, which you will probably find the most interesting, is this: around 80% of Existential Espresso essays were conceived while wasting my time.

To be fair, having ideas for what to write about was never a problem for me, as is hopefully obvious from the quantity of my writing over the last couple of years. But there is no doubt that this took me to a new level.

Of course, a lot of my writing is the result of months of reading and thinking about different ideas from great thinkers; it doesn't appear out of nowhere. But having this time when I do absolutely nothing and consume absolutely nothing allowed me to digest different ideas and develop a more authentic perspective on them.

I realized that, when you stop consuming things all the time, no matter how educational they are, you finally let your mind be free. You let it work on its own instead of constantly guiding it.

As I got used to wasting some time out of my day, I learned to let my mind roam around and see where it takes me.

If you decide to start wasting some of your time, which I hope you do, it's important to know that your mind is not always going to take you where you want. Sometimes it takes you to an unpleasant place that you would rather not visit. But that’s probably all the more reason to see what it is that you’ve been escaping from with your productivity and efficiency.

I realized, or finally remembered, that if you are consuming something non-stop, no matter how valuable and educational it is, you are not even allowing yourself to digest it.

It is only when you are truly alone with yourself that you are able to digest the different information and ideas that you've been consuming. And only then does something valuable or creative emerge out of it.

If we are consuming non-stop, then it stops being about the value that you get out of those things that you are consuming. It becomes just another form of distraction. It’s just that this form of distraction doesn’t leave you with a bad conscience like Netflix does, because you tell yourself that the time has been spent in a productive and efficient way.

I’m not saying never listen to audiobooks, online lectures, or podcasts. I'm not saying you should never read on public transportation. Do all of those things. By all means, take a good look at your average day and notice the empty blocks of time that could be used in a better way.

What I’m trying to say is that if you become obsessed with every minute of your time being spent efficiently, you end up feeding your mind all the time, which ends up being counterproductive. You are overloading your mind.

And if we are so concerned about efficiency, there is nothing efficient about a mind that is consuming non-stop without having any time to rest or wander around freely.

Be intentional about having some moments of the day when you do absolutely nothing, or if you are doing a mundane activity like walking somewhere, preparing a meal, or eating it, you don’t consume anything in the background.

If you are honest with yourself and recognize that you are one of those people who, like me, became way too conscious about using their time productively and efficiently, I would advise you to go so far as to have a plan for wasting your time.

Just as you set aside time to read or listen to something valuable, set aside time to allow your mind to wander wherever it wants, without you feeding and guiding it.

According to my experience, over time you will develop a sense for when your mind needs some alone time and a break from all the inputs, and when consuming something educational or interesting is actually helping you and your mind is able to take it in.

And that should be the goal, in my opinion. Because needing a schedule for when it’s okay to do absolutely nothing is a pretty sad image of the modern human being, if you ask me.

Finally, relating to the beginning of this text, I want to say this: With all due respect for Mr. Buffet’s time management and the accomplishments he has made in the field of accumulating wealth, I have to say that there are far worse things in life than learning some songs by heart.

Thank you for reading.

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