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Is time ever wasted?


knout

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It's a very common thought to think "oh I wasted time", "so much time wasted"... But don't we get something from anything we do really? Whether it's experience, emotions, thoughts or wisdom - there is a little something to look back and find. Or is there?

What are your take on this? Have you found ways to get something from time you originally thought was simply wasted? What are your criterias to judge time that you think was wasted?

Any philosophical thoughts or inspirational quotes about it?

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No one else should own my time. If someone's going to grumble about my spending all Saturday lying in bed and responding to internet forum posts, that someone deserves a heaping pile of "**** off, you fascist ********."

On the other hand, I know I've certainly wasted plenty of my own time. Not necessarily because I've been "lazing about" doing "nothing productive," which is usually when my brain is doing all my best and most productive work for me in the background (my actual "work day" is mainly dumb mechanical keyboard-pounding to churn out what I thought about while "idle"). But there are other times when I've been thoroughly idle for no good purpose; not even receiving proper rest, but just idling about being ticked off at how idle I'm being.

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Scottthespy

I find time wasted if there was something else more practical that I knew I had to do, but put off to do completely impractical things. If I could be cleaning the kitchen, which would take fifteen minutes, but end up watching three hours of youtube till I'm falling asleep on the couch, and go to bed without cleaning. If I have an important call to make, but play Minecraft until its too late and I have to wait till tomorrow. Especially if no one gains anything from what I'm doing "instead". If I play Minecraft online, and mediate an argument between players, and they gain a little insight into how to behave, thats better than playing offline and building a treehouse no one will ever see.

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MissLunarWolf

it's only waisted, if you learn nothing from it.

You might learn, something about yourself, or your preferences. Or you might find yourself saying, "Oh damn, I better not do THAT again", because people who don't learn from the past will be doomed to repeat it.

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Time can definitely be wasted. However, whether or not it is is subjective.

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It's a very common thought to think "oh I wasted time", "so much time wasted"... But don't we get something from anything we do really? Whether it's experience, emotions, thoughts or wisdom - there is a little something to look back and find. Or is there?

What are your take on this? Have you found ways to get something from time you originally thought was simply wasted? What are your criterias to judge time that you think was wasted?

Any philosophical thoughts or inspirational quotes about it?

Many quotes from Babylon 5 concerning time come to mind, some include,

"I've always considered time to be very important.

I've often thought that when we are born we are given time in a multitude of tiny boxes so small that when we need them most, they're nowhere to be found."

Another, from "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," "Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so." :)

Or "Bloom County" comics, "Life must be lived fowards, but can only be understood backwards."

Or the collected knowledge and wisdom of my entire life, "Time is an illusion. Just like how matter's an illusion. If you could zoom in infinitely on a speck of matter you find it's just empty space surrounding a dot in the middle, but as you enlarge that dot it's again just empty space surrounding another smaller dot. Repeat this infinitely and you discover every atom or subatomic elementary particle is simply empty space. Reality then is a very literal sense illusory. Matter's empty space infinitely. So why do we experience things like matter? Time. Without time and WHEN we perceive matter, matter wouldn't be perceived at all. Time then is what enabled us to experience everything and anything becuase it enables us to measure a precise moment. In other words, without time fixing moments to static versions, everything would be taken in in their entirety which is nothing."

Or more simply, "We live, we go on some diets. We die." :)

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I think this poem by William Henry Davies sums it up pretty well :)

What is this life if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs

And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,

Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,

Streams full of stares, like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty's glance.

No time to wait till her mouth can

Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

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Well for example if you turn off the TV and stop paying attention to the vast majority of this useless TV and media related programs [including social media which I like to call anti-social media] and start to became more productive somehow then you could even improve you living standards. But of course there are many others ways to waste time, and I have been working on been more productive, manage my time better and keep a balance of the things that I do.

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I don't think that time is wasted. Seemingly unproductive time usually has a benefit elsewhere, even if not immediately apparent. Resting and doing nothing can increase productivity later on, or hypothetically extend life by averting a later problem. Consuming any form of media is of benefit to the publisher, and can expand the knowledge of the consumer.

Even erasing and redrafting a sentence in a post will ultimately be of use.

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I think this poem by William Henry Davies sums it up pretty well :)

What is this life if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs

And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,

Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,

Streams full of stares, like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty's glance.

No time to wait till her mouth can

Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

That's a great poem, Tanwen! Thanks for sharing! :cake:

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I don't think time can be wasted... you can't change the character of time, it marches on whether you want it to or not, whether you're being productive or not... one cannot waste what one has no control or influence over.

One can certainly waste opportunities, however.

Here's my favorite quote re: time:

And she would ask for time
And she'd ask for time
And she would ask for time
And she would beg for time,
And she would beg for time
And beg for time and call it a gift
And he would give her time
And he'd give her time
And he would give her time
And he'd give her time
But time is not given and time is not taken
It just sifts through its sift

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I think the only way time could be wasted would be if we truly knew how much time our lives had, and then calculate it out to see whether or not it's significant. But since we mostly run on analysis by retrospective reflection we aren't likely to be able to assess at every moment what is "good" vs. what is a "waste" of time.

It also depends on if people actually consider time to be relevant. Perspective tells us that 2 years for a person out of 10 years is significant, but 2 years for a person out of 1'000 years is simply a blip. It's all relative.

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  • 1 month later...

Well for example if you turn off the TV and stop paying attention to the vast majority of this useless TV and media related programs [including social media which I like to call anti-social media] and start to became more productive somehow then you could even improve you living standards. But of course there are many others ways to waste time, and I have been working on been more productive, manage my time better and keep a balance of the things that I do.

Correction- asocial. A= not, anti= aga-

You know what, you're right. "Anti" works a whole lot better here. Nevermind. ;)

But to respond to the OP, I don't really think much about the definition of that. If I realize that there's something that I subjectively consider a "better" use, then I call the time already expended on the "worse" use "wasted".

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Mmm, this is something to think about. I was raised thinking that any time I'm not doing work is time wasted, so..! :P

I think it depends on how someone thinks, and what environment they were raised in. For example, I consider sleeping while knowing I have a big workload a time-waster, but someone who was raised differently than me could think the opposite!

Also, this may sound depressing, but every second we're still alive is another second closer to death, so really I think it's impossible to truly waste time! ...Or, to truly not waste time?

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I spent some philosophical thoughts on it; observed what my roommate was doing for a moment; and all I could think of ...

was ...

Yes.

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"Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time"--Marthe Troly-Curtin

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SorryNotSorry

Time is something not even a billionaire has enough of.

Here's my time rhyme, Gollum's riddle from the Hobbit:

This thing, all things devours;

Birds, beasts, trees, flowers;

Gnaws iron, bites steel;

Grinds hard stones to meal;

Slays king, ruins town;

And beats high mountain down.

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The time I just spent eating that cheap ice cream was entirely wasted. Also the time I spent the previous three nights eating it, and the time I spent buying it in such a large container that I feel I would be wasting my money not to eat it all.

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Seinfeld's got this one

ELAINE: You know, funerals always make me think about my own mortality and how I'm actually going to die someday. Me, dead. Imagine that.

GEORGE: They always make me take stock of my life and how I've pretty much wasted all of it, and how I plan to continue wasting it.

JERRY: I know, and then you say to yourself, "From this moment on, I'm not going to waste any more of it." But then you go, "How? What can I do that's not wasting it?"

ELAINE: Is this a waste of time? What should we be doing? Can't you have coffee with people?

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I'm actually of the opposite sort of opinion; everything we do is essentially meant to occupy/waste our time. Whatever sort of meaning we place onto the things we do to occupy said time (and therefore weigh whatever is supposedly more or less of a "waste" over other things) is purely our own.

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  • 2 weeks later...
Peaceful_Demon

I don't believe I ever waste time. However I am a very idle person and I truly need pushing to get a task done if I'm not passionate about. The time I spend being idle I merely regard as time taken out of the day in order to unwind and to let my brain relax, if I didn't have this time I know I would end up working myself to death on the things I care about. -H

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