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Locker

Spend Exactly None Of Your Time Killing Time

By
[54]Chris Thompson
PublishedJanuary 25, 2019
We may earn a commission from links on this page.
[55][56][57][58][59]
Image for article titled Spend Exactly None Of Your Time Killing Time
Illustration: Chelsea Beck (GMG)

Here’s a good resolution, if you’re the sort of person who resolves to do good
and healthy things and then maintains any hope of actually doing them: Resolve
to divide your waking hours exactly and only between doing things you should be
doing, and doing things you want to be doing.

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When you are not doing something you should be doing—straightening up around
the house, taking out the garbage, walking the dog, your job—you should always
and only be doing something you actively want to be doing, like reading a book,
or playing video games, or pursuing a hobby. Conversely, when you are not doing
something you want to be doing, you should always and only be doing something
you should be doing. This is a good resolution because it’s not aimed at some
specific result that deviates a whole lot from who you are already, like
overhauling your diet or your sleep regimen or whatever. No overhaul required,
here. You already do plenty of what you’re supposed to do, and plenty of what
you want to do. Resolve to stop doing anything else.

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But I already do this, you are saying, as you sit at your desk, not working,
procrastinating, avoiding work by dicking around on the internet and winding up
on a dumb-ass late-January blog about, of all things, self-improvement. No!
Right now, you are not following this very good advice. You are not doing what
you should be doing—unless what you should be doing is reading blogs—nor are
you doing what you really want to be doing, which is parasailing or skiing or
hunting moose in [70]ye olde cowboy game. You are killing time, waiting for
either the energy for work or the consequences of not doing work to give your
life some feeble structure. Stop it! Killing time is the very habit we are
trying to address, here. There’s barely enough time as it is.

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Along the way you will need to hone your sense of what things you should be
doing. You know the most obvious ones—they’re occupying the margins of your
consciousness all the time, bearing down on you and poisoning the time you
spend not doing them. Chores, assignments, projects, bills, phone calls,
repairs, and so forth. The list is a little bit longer than that, which is both
good news and bad news. It’s bad news because it includes things like talking
to your folks on the telephone, or listening patiently while your spouse rants
about their day, or brushing your teeth—things you put off doing nearly as much
as work but which, I’m afraid, must be done. But it’s also good news, because
by acknowledging that those are responsibilities, you have also earned the
right to take some satisfaction from having fulfilled them.

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Sometimes you have the bandwidth and energy to address your attention to the
things you should be doing, and other times the thought of getting your car
inspected or working out or washing a sinkful of dishes fills you with a sudden
urge to throw yourself down a well. When you have the energy to do the things
you should do, do them, or keep doing them. When you don’t—and this is
crucial—go ahead and give yourself permission to set them aside for another
time. But—and this is also crucial, because it is the lesson of this damn
blog—when you give yourself permission not to do the things you should be
doing, please spend the resulting block of free time doing something good and
cool, something you genuinely want to do.

You will also need to hone your sense of what it is you want to be doing.
Today, the thing I most want to be doing in all the universe is riding Splash
Mountain. That activity, I am afraid to say, is completely out of the question,
in no small part because I am supposed to be doing the thing I least want to do
in all the universe, which is working. Since I would certainly rather die than
actually work, I’m going to do something else. But what? It helps to start all
the way out at riding Splash Mountain, because understanding want in terms of
genuine desire keeps you from slipping into the shitty headspace of just
measuring activities against the dread and misery of work. In almost all cases
I would rather be watching Law & Order reruns than doing chores, but that
doesn’t mean I really want to be watching Law & Order reruns. In the endless
list of things I could conceivably do with a day, watching Law & Order reruns
is probably closer to doing chores than it is to riding Splash Mountain. In
fact, I often default to watching Law & Order reruns because some part of my
brain recognizes that it keeps me anchored in place near the chores, and isn’t
so joyful that I can be said to be really enjoying myself, which is clearly
something I don’t deserve.

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So it is with scanning headlines or surfing Instagram or refreshing Twitter,
the grey shit you do compulsively when you are procrastinating. Yes, you would
rather be doing those things than painting your living room—anything, including
bleeding from the eyeballs, is better than painting—but that doesn’t
necessarily mean they’re worth a shit. If you’re not going to paint the living
room, that’s fine! But now use the time on something good! In my case, if I
start all the way out at riding Splash Mountain and work backward from there,
long before I get to watching Law & Order reruns, I will arrive at things like
bowling or going to the movies or hunting moose in ye olde cowboy game. Those
are things I find myself wanting to do, but rarely give myself permission to
do. Ask yourself, “What are some activities that would be genuinely fun?” Make
a list! Cross off the stuff you know you can’t do, and then pick and do one of
the ones you can. Go to the zoo. Watch a horror flick. Try out a new bar. Read
a few chapters of a good book.

It can feel reckless and irresponsible to spend your day bowling or baking or
hunting moose in ye olde cowboy game, but a big chunk of the guilt associated
with these activities stems from not really giving yourself permission to do
them, at least in part because too much of your average day is already given
over to tweeting at Jonathan Chait. But it’s healthy and productive to do cool
and fun things that enrich your life! The solution, here, is to buy yourself
the time to do the really interesting things by first being honest with
yourself about all the sweaty hours you waste tweeting at Jonathan Chait. You
are a successful and prolific time-killer because you’ve got a selection of
ways of doing it that are marginally less dreary and more stimulating than
folding laundry or managing spreadsheets, and some inherited puritanical
impulse that tells you you’re still close to upright so long as you’re not
actually enjoying yourself. Bullshit! When you are not doing what you are
supposed to do, do something you genuinely want to do. That’s the rule.

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Of course, there will be any number of times when you are prevented from doing
any of the things you want to be doing. The rule is also this: When you cannot
do what you genuinely want to do, do what you are supposed to do. Here is a
good life hack: when you lack the bandwidth to take on an important chore or
duty, you probably still have the bandwidth to make a list of all your
important chores and duties. Do that! This counts as a thing you should be
doing, because often enough in making the list you will hit on something that
requires little enough of you that you can take it on right away, without too
much suffering. And even if you don’t, the making of the list will bring you a
little closer to addressing yourself to the items on it, and that’s enough of a
positive step that when the time comes for you to do something you want to do,
you will feel the satisfaction of having earned it, through work. That’s what’s
missing from the shame-soaked hours spent avoiding and procrastinating: the
feeling that you deserve to have a good time, and the permission to have one.

Of course, you will probably fall short of dividing your time exactly equally
between responsibilities and pursuits. Don’t think of that as failure. When you
remember this wise practice, when it occurs to you, treat it as a rule and
follow it. Ah, right, I said I wasn’t gonna sit here stewing in my anxiety all
afternoon, so instead I’m going to go see [71]Into the Spider-Verse. Good plan!
You are going to end the day with something to show for it, and that’s the
whole idea.

Continue reading

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[5] https://kotaku.com/
[6] https://qz.com/
[7] https://theroot.com/
[8] https://thetakeout.com/
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[21] https://deadspin.com/locker/the-mourning-after
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[68] https://deadspin.com/which-nfl-team-lands-jim-harbaugh-as-their-next-head-co-1851156349
[69] https://deadspin.com/josh-allen-trevor-lawrence-or-the-eagles-who-are-the-1851149579
[70] https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/i-like-chopping-firewood-in-red-dead-redemption-2-1830178593#_ga=2.215259543.149258240.1547482638-1486199056.1525795056
[71] https://film.avclub.com/superhero-dimensions-collide-in-a-funny-gorgeously-psy-1830700647
