Be productive with your time

A slower pace of life can make you happy

The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time. ~ Bertrand Russell

What is life but time.  We know this inherently when we talk about the things we care about, we always talk about time spent with family or friends.  That time we did something or went somewhere.  Time is also our most precious resource, it is the one thing we cannot manufacture more of.  We know this inherently as well, for people that we love, who we have lost, we often talk about what we would be willing to give for just one more day with them, one more word, one more chance to hold them.

But humans by nature are paradoxical animals and as much as we may inherently know that time is a precious resource we often act as if it isn’t.  We wait, god how we wait before doing things.  We call it procrastination so it doesn’t sound so bad but we do far too much of it.  All of us have waited before letting someone know how we feel, waited before starting that degree or changing jobs or getting out of a bad relationship.  One of the things I do in order to battle against our natural tendency to procrastinate is to remind myself of the very precious nature of time and how fast it can go by.  That reminder often is enough to push me into action.

During the pandemic I found myself just wasting time.  Essentially I would work and then just sit down, relatively mindlessly in front of the television for the rest of the night.  Now, I’m not one of those TV is bad people, I’m a TV watcher.  After the end of the day, when I’ve done all of the things I want and need to do, I thoroughly enjoy watching an hour or two of good quality TV.   It allows me to be entertained, and to relax in a relatively mindless way.  One of my biggest issues is difficulty in slowing my mind down, TV allows me to do that in a way that is satisfying.  So if I’m taking time at the end of the day to watch a quality TV show that’s productively using my time.  When I’m tolerating mediocre TV just to have something to watch, well that’s actually wasting time.  It was this realization and reminding myself about my precious and limited time that snapped me out of my funk and got me moving back to using my time more productively.

So what am I saying, that we should all work like dogs every waking moment of our life?  Absolutely not.  To be very clear what I’m pushing when I say be productive is that I believe we need to be purposeful in how we use our time.  Make sure that the way you use your time accomplishes something that you need.  The obvious things in that are things like taking care of your family, your relationships, building your wealth, your health, doing things that will improve your quality or quantity of work, even your side-hustles.  But relaxation is also something you need, entertainment is also something you need.  So  purposeful relaxation is a productive use of your time.  As the quote above says, time you enjoyed wasting, is not wasted time.  I love this quote, I love the sentiment, I love that within the quote there is this judgement of what wasted time is, but that the quote also says that, that particular judgment doesn’t matter.  Remember, it is you who determines whether or not what you are doing is unproductive or wasted time, not others.

So my friends, find ways to make your time productive even if it’s just to relax.  If you are thoughtful about what you do, you won’t wasted your precious time and you’ll have happier days. ~ Rev Kane