When I was a teenager, I spent my entire free time playing video games. Mostly League of Legends but also Call of Duty, Age of Empires, or Minecraft. This wasn’t a casual hobby. It was an obsession. I would come home from school, toss my backpack into the corner, boot up my computer, and play — often late into the night. School was secondary.
As I got older and played fewer games, I felt more and more daft. Others had spent their teenage years going out, experiencing things, getting to know themselves, and building relationships. And then, there was me. I had spent my young years commanding cartoon figures in virtual worlds.
Adding it all up, I must’ve spent over ten thousand hours playing video games. Ten thousand hours — that amounts to 20 hours per week for ten years or, say, 40 hours per week for five years. Ten thousand hours is also the time it takes to truly master a skill (at least according to one controversial study). If I hadn’t played video games, I could’ve mastered the violin, written a book, or competed in professional bike races.
But I didn’t. And the toothpaste of time can’t be put back into its tube. So, ostensibly, those ten thousand hours were frittered, flushed down the drain, and downright wasted.
Right?
After the video games went, YouTube came. It was around this time that I discovered Casey Neistat — a YouTuber who used to upload daily videos while also running a business, a family, and marathons.
One particular video hit me like a domino block in the face. In that video, Casey talks about time management. He starts by quoting Seneca, says that time is his most valuable resource, and explains that he tries not to waste a single moment. “The only time I really get bummed out or depressed,” Casey says, “is when I’m not being productive, is when I’m not accomplishing or doing or contributing in any way. Nothing makes me less happy than relaxation and sitting around with nothing to do.”
He then sketches out how he structures his day by dividing his time into six broad categories: free time, sleep, work, exercise, family, and fun. I watched in awe as Casey broke down how he accomplishes so many things in the same 24 hours we all get each day. Here’s his average day:
- Exercise: 3 hours.
- Work: 14 hours.
- Family: 3 hours.
- Sleep: 4 hours.
- Free Time: 0 hours.
- Fun: 0 hours.
The video left an impression on me. Most of all, I remember feeling guilty because, unlike Casey, I wasn’t spending my time on lots of worthwhile activities. I was watching YouTube. And so, I became intrigued by the notion that time is a resource you can bend to your will; that you can squeeze more time out of your day, granted you apply the right pressure.
I embarked on the project Waste No Time. Soon, my days started to look a lot like Casey’s. I would wake up, exercise for an hour, work ten hours, walk home, work another two hours, and sleep. Everything was geared toward work. Even in the hours I didn’t work, I tried to recharge as quickly as possible so I could get back to work and work harder.
That was it. That was my life.
And yet, ironically, I still felt like I wasn’t doing enough. I would write an article, read a book, have a good conversation, and think to myself: This can’t be it. Surely, there must be more. I’m still not getting enough out of my time.
I grew very sensitive to each second I didn’t spend productively, feeling compelled to turn those seconds into more fruitful endeavors. When I caught myself lying in bed, dabbling on my phone, I felt frustrated and guilty, beating myself up because I wasn’t improving, creating, contributing.
I also tried to hoard time. I remember one evening, in particular, when I stood on a mountaintop, looked down into the valley below me, and watched the most beautiful sunset unfold. Streaks of orange and purple pierced the clouds. A warm breeze caressed my cheeks. Crickets chirping in the distance. The scent of lavender.
What I recall most from that moment, though, is how intensely I tried to bottle it all up. I was overly aware of how quickly this moment would pass. I didn’t want to waste it. I wanted to enjoy it, savor it, make it last, make it last, make it last.
Paradoxically, whenever I tried to alchemize time into fulfillment, what I gained instead was restlessness, worthlessness, and anxiety.
I wasn’t managing my time. Time was managing me.
In a weird and wicked way, Project Waste No Time failed me on both ends. “Slouchy” activities infused me with regret because I wasn’t being productive. “Productive” activities infused me with anxiety because nothing felt good enough. I was constantly striving toward a future state: a goal, a milestone, a feeling of bliss. And yet, in the rare moments I actually attained these states, the sand grains of satisfaction slipped right through my fingers.
The irony was almost comical. The more I thought about having wasted time, the more I lived in the past. Conversely, the more I thought about not wasting time, the more I lived in the future. The irony is, of course, that I never arrived in the present.
The only way out of this cul-de-sac, I suppose, is to make a move that might be considered horrendously bizarre in our post-industrial society:
Intentionally wasting time.
As strange as it may sound, wasting time is an art that can be mastered, just like baking delicious cakes or drawing photorealistic sketches. In many Buddhist traditions, wasting time is even an important ritual. Tantric Buddhism, for instance, practices the poignant ceremony of constructing sand mandalas. Over hundreds of hours, monks carefully place millions of dyed sand grains to create a giant artwork of complex patterns and images. Once the mandala is finished, the monks destroy it by sweeping the sand toward the mandala’s center until all that remains is one colorful pile of dust.
Disciples of neoliberalism might jump in at this point, shouting at the monks, “Wait! Don’t destroy it! You can sell that as art!” But of course, the point of mandalas is precisely their impermanence, their futility, their pointlessness.
“Indeed,” says the Australian philosopher W.D. Joske, “the very pointlessness of an activity can contribute to its pleasure, making it more truly play.”
We’ve all inherited an idea of what counts as wasted time and what doesn’t. For me, it’s the idea that time is only well spent when it creates future value. Every second must count for something. And yet, this assumption is absurd on several levels.
If everything must count for something, there must be an ultimate end goal that justifies all these activities. Of course, some people’s end goal might be to earn money, status, or happiness. But whenever I tried adopting one of these end goals, I couldn’t help but wonder: And what’s that for?
Experientially, the logic is also flawed. I, for one, have never felt at peace while working toward something. The few moments in which I was truly at peace occurred when I was not progressing toward professional goals, not doing something useful, not pursuing a means to an end. Rather, the peaceful moments were the “wasteful” moments. The moments in which I sat on a park bench, walked through a dense forest, or idly lay in a meadow.
This is not to say that all future-directed actions are futile. They’re quite fun and necessary to what we call life. And yet, I’m convinced that spending some of my lifetime wastefully is the only way not to waste it. If I hadn’t “wasted” ten thousand hours playing video games, I might’ve never discovered what’s important to me now. I also might’ve had much less fun in my teens. Who knows. I like to think that it was all necessary.
The crux is that time is not a resource to be spent but an actuality to be experienced. Time is not something we can waste, spend, hoard, or have. Much rather, it’s something we are. From this perspective, wasting time — existing purposelessly — carries cosmic importance. It’s a necessity.
Thinking about it now, I really should stop writing these lines and waste a little bit of my precious time.