Leisure - I am to live, dear.
1400 hours a year
Without much consideration, I tend to do the things that are easiest - like watching TV, scrolling the internet for no apparent reason and watch people show off their inspiring acheivements on YouTube. But that's not what I am doing. Instead, I...
Wasted time
J. B. Peterson put it nicely in his future authoring program: If you "waste" 4 hours each day, which is not uncommon, then you are saying goodbye to 1400 hours a year. That is equivalent to thirty-five 40-hour work weeks, which is almost as much as the typical individual spends at his or her job every year.
Need another push? Add an hourly wage like €25 to this number. Your time then is worth €35,000 per year, over 50 years that's €1.8 million (excluding interest & other means of value increase).
While I think its ok to have an evening of laziness, netflix & chill, I just took this example to make aware of the overall magnitude of seemingly "just a bit of TV, streaming, and social media" every day. So what aspect is key here? If you ask me it is about taking conscious choices and bring to light uncoscious mechanisms, second guessing "automated" actions.
The key is being conscious about time spent.
If you feel like doing nothing, that's ok. Enjoy it. To be conscious, you can say out loud the activity you are about to start, see how that makes you feel.
So, doing nothing, getting bored in itself is literally the opposite of a waste of time - if done consciously.
What else to do?
There's only a few people I know who say they don't have time to watch TV, while still having ample leisure. When I ask them what they do all evening / weekend long, they usually reply with things that sounds really nice, and surely better for their screen time: taking care of the plants, pets, reading, knitting, cooking and the alike. And obviously, meeting friends.
My all time favorite leisure activities so far include:
- a sommelier course
- cooking & hosting dinner parties
- getting a licences for motorboats
- playing tennis with friends
- writing on here
- hiking / nature
Do you have a crazy, awesome or really boring activity that makes your life richer? Feel free to share it via Mail.
Here's a video of "kurzgesagt" on time, one of my favorite YouTube channel (to spend my digital leisure time at 😉)
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