Friend, writer, Management Guru and fellow alumnus of Business School has written something very interesting in one of the articles in an anthology of his writings in various News Papers and Magazines.
Average Life Expectancy – 75 years.
We sleep for – 22 years.
We work for – 32 years.
We are in the toilet – 2 years.
We eat for – 4.5 years.
With family etc, – 3 years.
We socialise for – 3 years.
That leaves a balance of about 8.5 years, which he says is what can be classified as Time Wasted by us!
Very interesting!
I worked for a living for 40 years. That means that I have wasted only six months of my life! I am already 75 and expect to live for a few more years. So, may be I will catch up with the wasting part of it.
I love wasting time and have been lucky enough to be able to do a lot of it. By the end of next month Andy and I will have been retired for 25 years. How cool is that!
And you still have a long way to go. My best wishes that you enjoy more retirement of the kind that both of you have.
I’m sure I’ve spent most of my allotted time in “wasting time” – last w/end I spent a few amount of hours wasting time, doing very little as I tried to revamp my rest/recovery time – to date it’s worked…
I also spent a fair amount of wasted time, these last two days after I made a monstrous decision to do something quite radical – I didn’t know how it would pan out but mid morning today, I discovered “I could now spend a lot more time ‘a-wasting”
The trick I think is in not feeling guilty about wasting time!
I proffer that one can’t “waste” time. Time just is. Regardless of what you do with it.
And then, how do you define “waste”? I am vaguely resentful about the time sleep takes up which is why I keep it to the minimum required to keep me sane and rested. And when I meander and contemplate, in the eyes of others doing little or nothing, I don’t see that as waste. It makes me happy.
Tragic when people are forced to waste time because their employer wants bums on seats even if there is nothing to do. Criminal! Even then the mind is free to wander and amuse itself whilst looking busy doing nothing.
Come to think of it, Ramana, ruminating on time wasting is the biggest waste of time of all.
U
Brilliant observation Ursula. I am Indian remember? We spend a lot of time, you can call it wasting, on navel gazing! https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=navel-gazing
Time spent staring into space may sound like wasting time. I do a lot of that, although I prefer to call it ‘contemplating’! Also, time spent looking at my garden, watching it grow—I guess you could call that wasting time! And time spent thinking about what to do next in my blog may sound like a waste of time, but actually can be thought of as ‘work’. Okay, I’m with Ursula, this is definitely a waste of time!
What you are doing is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omphaloskepsis Enjoy!
I agree with U – time just is – if you wish to assign some label to a portion of it wasting time is as reasonble a label as any. But whether it is really wasting time is open to debate.
feeling guilty about it is the clicker to me. you nailed it.
” The trick I think is in not feeling guilty about wasting time! “