Reclaiming Impermanence: A New Perspective on Wasting Time

Good news: you’re not a hypocrite. 

Or, if it’s any consolation, I don’t think you are. 

I see you sweating over meticulous to-do lists, penciling, in excruciating detail, the tasks you need to accomplish this Sunday from 1:00-3:00 PM. I hear you courteously decline that movie because you “need to study for chem tonight.” And yes, I feel your frustration after accidentally spending those two hours procrastinating, accomplishing none of what you so dutifully planned. 

How can you claim you’re working when you’re just wasting time? 

Story by Dina Barrish // @dinabarrish // she/her

Graphic by Sanjana Reddy // @sanj_r12 // she/her

Yuval Noah Harari, acclaimed Israeli professor, and author, offers insight into this relatively irksome conversation. In Harari’s “21 Lessons for the 21st Century” he writes that “if you cannot afford to waste time, you will never find the truth,” later identifying this “truth” as a scientific discovery made through trial and error, as well as self-discovery made through pondering. Rather than impeding productivity, “wasting time” facilitates achievement: crucially, revelation accompanies not a rigid structure, but the freedom to be for a little while.  

In other words, Harari agrees with me.

To attain any ultimate goal is to experiment, to explore. In “wasting time,” you’re remodeling reality — escaping an often suffocating regiment for a reviving breath of creativity. 

The human mind is far too messy to function as schedules and to-do lists. You need the empty space between tasks — what we too frequently stigmatize as “procrastination” — to reach your fullest potential as thinker, writer, inventor, performer, and person. Productivity isn’t everything, nor is it always the objective. Let’s challenge the definition of efficiency and reclaim the concept of “wasting time.” 

Now, I should pause here. I’m not naive. I’m not encouraging, suggesting, or permitting unadulterated procrastination. 

There exists a hierarchy of wasted time: the bottom tier being your mind-numbing Netflix binges, with unprecedented bouts of brainstorming at the peak. “Wasting time,” as Harari and I perceive it, doesn’t mean shirking responsibility so detrimentally that Apple says your screen time increased 60% and caffeine becomes a survival resource. 

When you allow yourself to slightly manipulate the agenda because you spontaneously realize the perfect ORANGE magazine pitch, song for your Spotify wake-up playlist, birthday extravaganza to throw your best friend — that’s time appropriately and valuably “wasted.” 

Transform, reshape, and repurpose those otherwise vexing moments when conventional productivity falters, because that extra time yields an unrevealed truth. 

Of course, sometimes the lines of the hierarchy are blurred. Your creative process and mode toward undiscovered achievement might very well warrant logging hours on Reddit, Youtube, or Twitter. 

Maybe you’re an entrepreneur, and to institute a business, as a practical response to societal demands, you need to spend a while on social media perusing to find what society is demanding. Or maybe you’re an artist and to generate unique expression you incorporate the influence of multiple cultures by watching British, Spanish, Chinese, and Arabic TV shows. But the bottom line remains: when we allow ourselves to relax from an oppressive adherence to a schedule, “wasting time” can become a stepping stone toward personal fulfillment.  

Most importantly, we must remember that time is temporary. The essential space between tasks is empty, sure, but it is more significantly transient, or transitory. Regard “wasted time” not as a mark of failure, but as a necessary transition phase. Reclaim impermanence. 

And as you add those instructions to today’s schedule, be sure to embrace the meantime.