Importance of wasting time

There is always so much do and achieve in one’s life. We always keep running around with the feeling of getting things done from the endless list of to do’s. There is this culture of making one feel all productive and even a second wasted is looked at terribly. But what we don’t realize is, in this type of life where all we care about is getting things done all the time, becomes dull and monotonous and hence you need a break to rejuvenate, hence need of me time, lazy time or rather say wasting time becomes fulfilling and utmost important.

What we, the today’s generation do is spend long hours on thinking how to spend time well. Irony!! Isn’t it. And here we miss some important moments with our family and friends.

The problem that we face today is that everyone is conditioned about chasing productivity so much that we think the break time can be better use in striking off the no. 9 from the to-do list. We don’t sleep, go for a walk, read etc. whenever we find time from our so-called productive schedule, we end up thinking and planning about what to do next and hence feeling guilty of not putting the current time to the best use.

Instead, what we actually do is sit like a zombie in front of our laptop and have a sense of working but not actually working. Hence we neither contribute to our work nor your happiness.

“There’s an idea we must always be available, work all the time,” says Michael Guttridge, a psychologist who focuses on workplace behavior. “It’s hard to break out of that and go to the park.”

The downside of this is blank stare at the computer while working, opening facebook while pretending to work, etc. The think we tell ourselves, this is multitasking and I am not wasting any time but in reality, we are far from doing the basic work even, forget to multitask.

The idea of eating and drinking at the desk is not good at all as it doesn’t help in gathering our thoughts. Instead, we should go for a walk to coffee shop, cafeteria, etc. Here, we miss the physical and mental benefits of spending time with ourselves.

This is not to say we should not work hard or not complete the assignment. The truth is, work expands to fill the time it’s given and, for most of us, we could spend considerably fewer hours at the office and still get the same amount done.

Sometimes activities like going to the gym can be weighed down by the sense of responsibility as we must reach office before anyone. Surprisingly, we start watching movies and shows in fast forward to get the summary. This was meant for fun but we start doing it like work hence taking the fun and pleasure out of the activity. We then think that we had the fun time but with no actual benefits of wasting that time.

“Wasting time is about recharging your battery and de-cluttering,”. Taking time to be total, gloriously, proudly unproductive will ultimately make you better at your job. But it’s also fulfilling in and of itself.

At the end of the day, all of us need to have some off time doing things we like and want to do. We should think this time as time well spent as you gain a lot of focus and not as unproductive time.