Wasting Time is not Wasted Time.

In the world of today schedules and time management have become premiums. Yet in our haste to be so productive we forget to take time for ourselves. The other day as I was reading an article about the psychological importance of wasting time I recalled a John Lennon quote, " Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans". In my daily life I strive to maximize all the hours of the day---I mean this literally. Having tried to organize every hour to squeeze every bit of productivity out of it I was ending up doing a whole lot of nothing. Why? Because in my haste I was forgetting to make time for myself. After reading the article I reflected on how I had been over-scheduling myself recently and how it was negatively effecting my productivity.

Every day sees it's shares of mundane chores and often, bored, we slug our way through errands and to-dos. A suggestion of the article is to make the more of what we consider " wasted time", I have taken this to mean being mindful in the mundane. What does this mean? Well the other day I had to go to the bank which is a quick drive down the street. But I currently cannot drive my car l;leaving me with only one option: walking. Rather than being frustrated at the now 40 minute walk before I took this an opportunity for a mindful moment. Walking down the street I took all the time I wanted, looked at the trees, I enjoyed taking deep relaxing breaths. Instead of going the most direct path I went down side neighborhoods, listened to the birds and on my trip back home I stopped at a coffee shop. Sitting outside I listened to the various sounds car emitted passing on the busy intersection, I listened to the sound of people all around me. During the whole trip I spoke little, turned airplane mode on and embraced the quiet to which my mind subsided. In a world where the pressure to perform can be a constant presence it is good to take a moment to deliberately take it slow.

Click on either image to be linked to the article reference in this post!

#Time #mindfulness #present