Top Alternatives to Wasting Time

By Gregory D. Luce on June 24, 2014 — 1 min read

Like me, you’re probably wasting time to feel like you’re not wasting time. Culling, web foraging, jumping from this to that and there. Stop. Do the allegedly nonproductive. Like these.

1. Stare Out the Window

Sit at the dining room table with a cup of coffee and stare out the window. Examine everything that goes by, watch what your neighbor is watching. Or sit back in your chair at the office and look at the sky, the trees, the people coming and going in the parking lot, a food truck, a bicycle. Maybe you don’t have a window. Find one. Stare out of it. Don’t time it. Just, whatever.

2. Pet a Cat

Run your hand from the cat’s head, down its back. Scratch its chin and rub behind its ears. Let it climb on your lap or chest and sit there until it purrs and gets tired and hops off.

Allergic to cats or don’t have one? Hold someone’s hand.

3. Talk to a Human (or a Dog)

Not “via” email, text, or keyboard. And not in a meeting, conference, luncheon, summit, or confab. Real voices, sound or sign language, whatever your thing. Sit down on a sofa, lie down on the floor, sit across a table at a cafe. Talk to a kid, your kid, your brother’s kid, answer the questions.

If a human is not around, find a dog. Talk. It will listen, usually.

4. Doodle

Grab a marker and a piece of paper and go nuts. Draw lines, angles, your head, a boat. Write out your name. Write “parsnip” or “chowder“ and cross them out, embellish, color, fly.

5. Random Bits

Twiddle your thumbs. Take a walk to the southeast. Or north. Hop a bus, look, get off, stroll, listen for playgrounds. Knit on the porch, unravel, mix.

Just so you know, I waste a lot of time. But not the kind that counts.

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