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Daily, snackable writings to spur changes in thinking.
Building a blueprint for a better brain by tinkering with the code.
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WASTING TIME
December 4th, 2019
There are two ways to waste time.
The first is the obvious way. Completely passive, with a belly full of food, another beer now cracked and a TV show or a movie coming into focus. Or with the phone whipped out, a thumb flicking away furious minutes.
We suspiciously refer to this activity as ‘relaxing’. And we’re told it’s a good idea because as it’s said all around, you gotta take it easy.
The second way to waste time is to try and create something. To work. At first glance work doesn’t sound like a waste of time, but if we are working on a project that makes no money, then perhaps some might call it a waste of time.
Isaac Newton for example wasted quite a bit of time tinkering around with Alchemy and theology. Luckily he wasted time in a third way that seems to have proven some benefit.
Some people don’t fit into cubicles. In fact, as a side note it’s fairly astonishing that so many people do fit into them, for years. And given the fact that many of them might not even really be doing anything. This is all the more surprising – perhaps even disturbing- when we compare it to a basic description of prison.
People who have genuine trouble with this kind of set up often have notions compelling them to seek other situations where those ideas might find a fertile patch of reality.
These people are often wasting time in a productive way. Of course, these people have little to no visibility until that thing they wasted so much time on suddenly turns out to be not so much of a waste. The curiosity and work pays off, and then others give it barely a second of thought as they wonder how they did it.
Must have just been lucky.
Luck certainly plays a role that is hard to pin down. But luck is more willing to play in certain environments with certain people rather than others. Luck certainly might frequent the cubical environment in some form, but it’ll be far more rare to bestow the same kind of opportunity it does for the inveterate tinkerer who toils away in obscurity with their latest idea.
