The Art of Manliness - #458： In Praise of Wasting Time

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast your time on earth

00:00:19.680 is finite once you use it up it is gone forever thus on the a1 podcast we talk a lot about how

00:00:24.800 to maximize your time how to use it more effectively to be more productive but is it

00:00:28.500 possible to be too concerned about managing your time should you also make space for chunking out

00:00:32.760 all the to-do lists and schedules and just kind of be idle my guest today would say yes his name is

00:00:37.680 alan lightman he's a physicist and a writer and the author of the book in praise of wasting time

00:00:42.240 today on the show alan forwards the sort of counterculture argument that intentionally

00:00:45.540 wasting time isn't advice but a virtue we begin our conversation by discussing what alan means by

00:00:50.300 wasting time and then get into how wasting time benefits our psyches creativity sense of mental

00:00:55.120 self-reliance and even ironically enough our productivity we end our conversation discussing

00:00:59.440 the difference between chronos time and kairos time and how wasting time allows to spend more time in

00:01:04.260 the latter state after the show's over check out the show notes at aom.is wasting time

00:01:09.480 okay alan lightman welcome to the show nice being on the show breath so you got a nice little book

00:01:27.040 out called in praise of wasting time which is based on a ted talk you gave before we get to the book i'd

00:01:33.120 like to talk about your background because i think it's really interesting you are you have a physics

00:01:36.980 background but you're also a novelist you write poetry you write essays and so it's not a combination you

00:01:43.840 see too often i'm curious how did that happen well i was very interested in both science and and the

00:01:53.460 arts from a young age i built homemade rockets and fired them and i wrote poetry i did science projects

00:02:04.480 and i was editor of the the school literary magazine i didn't see anything unusual about having

00:02:12.520 interest in both the science and the arts i do remember that my teachers and friends and and even parents

00:02:20.800 uh tried to push me in one direction or the other but i resisted those

00:02:26.960 those pushes and uh just continued

00:02:31.720 following my interests

00:02:33.920 yeah it sounded a lot like we had walter isaacson on a while back ago talk about da vinci

00:02:38.960 and da vinci was the same way he combined both arts and science together

00:02:44.020 well i think that he achieved a little bit more than i have in my

00:02:48.700 life well let's talk about this book in praise of wasting time because that's a provocative title

00:02:55.820 and we'll talk about our perceptions of time and our emotion towards it but what got you

00:03:01.980 thinking about hey maybe instead of seeing wasting time as a bad thing maybe there's some value to that

00:03:08.460 what what was the impetus well i for for many years my wife and i have spent our summers on an island

00:03:16.180 in maine a small island it it doesn't have any roads or or on it it doesn't have a ferry service

00:03:24.420 to it it doesn't have any bridges to the mainland and when we come here we unplug

00:03:32.180 and my wife is a painter and we've noticed that our uh creative activities our creative spirit is

00:03:40.820 tremendously boosted by

00:03:45.940 not having to do lists not having a schedule every day

00:03:52.500 and i have been alarmed over the last 25 years to see how the pace of life has increased

00:04:00.820 and people don't give themselves time anymore just to let their minds wander so uh both for positive and

00:04:09.700 negative reasons i have tried to orient my my lifestyle in such a way that i had periods of

00:04:18.660 time that were unstructured and unscheduled so i mean guess what do you mean by wasting time

00:04:24.260 because you know doing art that doesn't seem like it's a waste of time is so i'm sure there's

00:04:29.140 a specific what there's something you're trying to get at when you say wasting time yeah well that's

00:04:33.220 it's it's it's a good question and i think that i mean by wasting time is spending time that does not

00:04:40.980 have a a goal that is is not directed it's not scheduled spending time in a way that allows your mind to

00:04:52.820 wander and there are many activities that that fit that description it could be going out to dinner with

00:05:00.980 friends or it could be taking a walk in the woods or it could be just sitting quietly by yourself in a

00:05:08.740 chair but i think that part of of wasting time in the way that i think of it is is being free from

00:05:16.580 external stimulation i think that that we that especially with the internet and with the smartphones

00:05:23.940 that we we've been overwhelmed by an avalanche of external stimulation and information and it's it's

00:05:33.300 very hard to and under those conditions it's very hard to hear your own self think to get in touch with

00:05:40.820 your own inner self so i hope that that gives you some idea of what i mean by wasting time it's a

00:05:48.180 combination of of unplugging from the external world and spending time in a way that is unscheduled and

00:05:58.420 unstructured and and not goal-oriented gotcha and what i love about the book you get into sort of you know

00:06:05.620 a broad broad look of how our perception of time has changed over history and particularly how technology

00:06:14.820 uh advances in advances in communication technology has changed that perception of time yeah walk us

00:06:21.060 through how has advances in communication technology changed our perception of time well the the pace of

00:06:27.460 life has always been regulated by the speed of communication because the speed of communication

00:06:33.380 determines the speed of business transactions and everything else in the middle 1800s when the telegraph

00:06:42.580 was first invented that was a high speed communication of the time and i think there was a there was a

00:06:51.380 a physician named beard dr beard i can't remember his first name who who wrote an article about how people

00:06:59.460 were suffering greater anxiety because of the the higher speed of of life and he was referring to to the

00:07:06.500 the telegraph which was like three bits per second of speed and the middle around 1985 when the internet

00:07:14.740 first became public and available to most people the speed of communication was about a thousand bits

00:07:23.780 per second and today it's about one billion bits per second so we can see how the speed of communication has

00:07:34.100 increased increased the speed of life everything is faster i mean even walking speed is faster about

00:07:42.180 a decade ago the british council did a study of the walking speed in 35 countries and found that in the

00:07:50.420 just in the last 10 years the speed had increased by 10 percent so everything is faster and i i think that all

00:07:59.380 of that can be tracked back to the speed of communication and do you think beard was on to something that

00:08:06.420 this increased speed in communication even back then when it was three bits per second now it's a billion bits it

00:08:12.260 causes anxiety in people are we seeing that manifest itself i think that we have people are are rushing around

00:08:19.380 more in terms of of the measurement of stress less people have done studies of of college students and found that they are

00:08:27.380 definitely under greater stress than they were 25 years ago there was a recent article about a year ago that

00:08:34.900 came out in time magazine actually the cover of time magazine in the u.s uh that documented the the

00:08:42.660 increase in anxiety and depression among teenagers and some sociologists and psychologists analyzed that

00:08:51.700 tried to try to try to find the reasons why why depression and anxiety were increasing among young people

00:08:58.740 and of course there there are many factors but but one of the key factors was the pace of life and the fact that

00:09:07.140 teens are plugged in all the time on twitter and instagram and snapchat and facebook and they're all they're

00:09:16.180 afraid of of losing out of not keeping up with their friends they see all the activities that their

00:09:21.940 friends are doing and they see it at a high rate of speed and they have an anxiety about about not keeping

00:09:28.980 up uh there's actually an acronym for that that a psychiatrist friend explained to me it's called fomo f-o-m-o

00:09:37.060 which stands for fear of missing out and so i think that the the we see here the results of the the

00:09:45.300 increased pace of life and the interconnectedness the hype i would call it hyper connectedness of our

00:09:52.420 society and besides the increased anxiety you also highlight research that shows that young people

00:10:00.260 these days are less creative than say young people 20 30 years ago yes there was a study done by a

00:10:09.620 researcher at the college of william and mary a few years ago that used a standard test for creativity

00:10:17.540 that's been used for for 40 or 50 years and found that since the the early 1990s which was near the

00:10:26.740 the beginnings of of the of of the internet that creativity was decreasing among young people

00:10:36.260 and and this test measures creativity by a number of ways for example seeing a couple of objects and and

00:10:45.220 being asked what what kinds of of uh of activities can these objects be used for what what tasks can they

00:10:52.580 accomplish or get getting part of a story and being asked to complete the story those are just a couple

00:10:59.460 of examples of the things on the creativity test but it's really not surprising to me that the

00:11:05.220 creativity has decreased because i think that that the creativity requires stretches of unstructured time

00:11:14.020 gustav malar used to go walking in the in the countryside for several hours after lunch when he was working on a

00:11:20.820 piece of music and there they're there they're various examples of of people doing their creative work when

00:11:28.900 they are uh unplugged when they are separating themselves from the the rush and the heave of the outside world

00:11:38.740 and just listening to their inner thoughts gertrude stein the writer used to to take drives in the

00:11:46.580 countryside get out and just look at cows when she was working on a piece of writing to uh the the unconscious mind

00:11:55.620 uh is is involved with the creativity and and we we have lots of evidence that that a lot of our thinking

00:12:03.780 happens unconsciously and the unconscious mind does best when it's not being poked and prodded

00:12:13.380 by the outside world when when it's just given time to to go up through its its secret hallways

00:12:22.020 and solitude and silence yeah and i think you also highlight research i mean and i've seen this as well

00:12:28.980 whenever we are bombarded by external stimuli our attention gets focused on that laser pointed that's

00:12:36.500 all we think about we all the only thing we look at and as a consequence we don't have this like i think

00:12:42.100 they call it the default mode that our brain goes in when we're not really paying attention to anything

00:12:46.340 in particular and in that default mode that's when like ideas in your head start swirling around and

00:12:53.780 mashing together basically yes yes so let's talk about this creative process and like how you've used

00:13:03.940 you know quote-unquote wasting time unplugging just unstructured unscheduled time how's that played out

00:13:10.180 in your life like what do you do you're a writer you've uh you know you wrote uh einstein's dreams

00:13:15.140 did you come up to any any situations where you you know hit a wall and then you just basically decide

00:13:21.060 you know what i'm gonna unplug i'm not gonna have any expectations of uh of getting something done i'm

00:13:26.740 just gonna go sit or walk and let my mind wander well yes that that happens that happens many times and

00:13:33.780 it happened when i was when i was in my scientific career as well as my writing career because science

00:13:39.940 is a creative activity as well but a lot of times the the solution to a problem will come

00:13:49.140 not when you're attacking the problem head-on but when you're doing something else that might be

00:13:56.820 unrelated to the problem at all taking a shower or taking a walk um i remember that i was uh working

00:14:04.740 on a a novel some years ago and i one of the characters was not coming to life and i kept

00:14:15.860 struggling and struggling and struggling and and trying different things with the character and i just

00:14:23.700 couldn't make the character come to life and it was killing the entire novel and and then i remember

00:14:31.220 i was i was just taking a walk one day and i started hearing dialogue from the character different

00:14:40.660 dialogue than i'd heard before and and suddenly i understood her in a much deeper way than i had

00:14:50.020 before uh and i think that that that that that my subconscious mind had been trying out different

00:14:58.180 pieces of dialogue for this character seeing which one opened up which one led to her heart

00:15:07.460 led to her soul and finally there was just one piece of dialogue that that that rose to my conscious

00:15:15.940 awareness awareness that made her come alive for me and i understood something about her that i hadn't

00:15:23.380 before a very similar thing happened when i was working on a scientific problem about long ago when i was in

00:15:30.100 graduate school and i've been beating my head against the wall for six months trying to find a mistake

00:15:37.220 that i had made and then i woke up one morning feeling like i was floating and i rushed to the kitchen table

00:15:49.380 where a bunch of my pages of calculations were lying there and i i suddenly realized the mistake that i had

00:15:57.300 made and it wasn't from going from one equation to the next or pounding on the problem it was something that

00:16:05.460 happened that happened unconsciously and i think that they just they're just many many examples

00:16:11.540 those are a couple from my own life but many examples where the the unfettered mind the unconscious mind

00:16:20.420 is able to accomplish things that the the schedule driven time driven mind cannot but of course there

00:16:31.700 there there there are many other values of of quote wasting time besides creativity uh i think

00:16:40.340 one of the and you can stop me here if you don't want me to go on no keep going but i think that

00:16:47.540 that that that we need unplugged unstructured time to to explore our inner self and consolidate our

00:16:58.340 self-identity and i know that sounds mushy and sentimental and trite but we need time to think

00:17:05.940 about who we are and what's important to us and where we're going our values and we need time to

00:17:14.500 remember things that we've done in the past and and reevaluate those with new experience and all of

00:17:22.100 that is part of of what i call consolidating our self-identity understanding who we are and you

00:17:29.460 can't rush through that you can't do that kind of mulling and thinking when you're you know sitting in a

00:17:37.620 in a dentist office waiting to go in and you've got 15 minutes to read a magazine or think you can't do

00:17:43.860 that when you're answering emails or uh when you're sending out twitters you you need time to where

00:17:51.460 there's nothing that you have to do and you're just letting your mind wander and think about what

00:17:57.940 it wants to think about i mean too often we're we're directing our minds to go from a to b and make

00:18:04.660 this appointment and make that appointment answer this phone call we're not letting our minds wander

00:18:11.700 freely and part of what we lose there is not just the ability to be creative but the ability to

00:18:19.060 to understand who we are we need to constantly evaluate who we are because we have new experiences

00:18:25.940 every day we have new decisions that we need to make and and and all of that is part of our self

00:18:33.620 identity and we need quiet solitude for that kind of of thinking we're going to take a quick break

00:18:42.660 for your word from our sponsors and now back to the show now that home that point really hit home uh

00:18:49.140 with me because uh it reminded me of the book the lonely crowd by david reisman written back in the 1950s

00:18:58.340 and basically he said that the american middle class was shifting to they're becoming other

00:19:04.100 directed beings basically they they got their sense of identity by looking what other people were doing

00:19:10.500 right and like social media particularly i think has amplified that or the internet because whenever

00:19:15.540 you have an opinion oftentimes the first thing you do is like well what do other do other people think

00:19:19.780 the same thing so you get on you know you google whatever you try to find something on reddit that

00:19:24.500 says you know agrees with you or disagrees with you and yeah i mean it i find myself doing that

00:19:30.500 and at the same time like man i just want to think what i want to think right not not care what other

00:19:34.820 people i mean you have to care what other people think there's like a balance but i feel we've gone too

00:19:38.980 far yeah well this is this is part of that fear of missing out the fomo syndrome that is causing 0.85

00:19:45.540 increased anxiety and and depression and teenagers that they're constantly checking with their friends

00:19:51.700 and with to see what other people are doing and they they don't have the the self-confidence

00:20:00.740 to just know what they're doing and so honor their own decisions in their own life we we just we're we've

00:20:10.180 developed a a a manner of living a a lifestyle in which we require constant external validation and

00:20:20.980 the the the internet that makes that so easy to do to check and see what other people are doing

00:20:28.180 yeah and i and i guess that that just increases the anxiety right because you you post something

00:20:32.660 on your kid you post something on instagram you think you think it's cool but then no one else

00:20:38.740 everyone just ignores it or they comment about it make fun of it and you're like oh maybe i shouldn't

00:20:44.740 do that thing but that's sad if that happens right so i mean besides unplugging besides you know i

00:20:53.300 guess you've done things where you go for walks i mean what are some other ways we can waste time

00:20:57.780 i mean you mentioned in the book playing is a great way to waste time but what kind of play are we

00:21:03.220 talking about here are we talking about video games structured sports leagues are you talking about

00:21:08.180 something else to me play is is is anything is where you're where you you um i guess sports is an an

00:21:18.740 interesting in-between case because when you're playing sports you you have a goal usually to to

00:21:25.780 defeat the other team or defeat the other player so a sport event can be recreational it can be something

00:21:34.100 that's relaxing but but it can also be something that's very stressful and and competitive so i think

00:21:39.700 it depends on how you play the sport what the outcome is in in terms of your your your your mental

00:21:46.660 state of being but for me play is again when you're engaging in that in an activity that that that doesn't

00:21:57.060 have a goal that is uh entertaining pleasurable unstructured uh i think that what i would add to

00:22:06.900 to to when i when we talked about what how do you define wasting time and i i said i thought it was

00:22:13.060 spending time any time where you don't have an uh a goal you don't have a schedule if you want to make

00:22:21.060 play a subset of that broad definition i would say that play is all of those things plus

00:22:27.700 something that's pleasurable gotcha so uh that could be a lot of things it could be

00:22:32.820 art i mean that's the type of play you kind of just mess around do what you want music could be

00:22:37.940 playful there are a lot of wonderful ways to waste time i think that that wasting time has gotten a

00:22:44.420 very bad rep that that we feel guilty especially in this age of high productivity we feel guilty when

00:22:54.100 we're not doing something that is manifestly productive and i think that part of that guilt

00:23:01.860 goes back to our our puritan origins the people who came over from england and scotland the pilgrims

00:23:09.380 part of the puritan ethic was that it was actually sinful to be idle that that was what they call

00:23:16.260 wasting time being idle being idle is not doing productive work it was actually a sin against god

00:23:23.620 according according to the puritan ethic and i think that that mentality even today you know 350

00:23:31.460 years later i think there is still deep in our culture and our cultural ethos this idea that that

00:23:40.420 wasting time or being idle or not doing productive work is is is sinful right but i mean there's also

00:23:48.340 in christianity a culture in some sects of where you waste i mean you kind of waste time like they

00:23:55.140 have festival weeks where they do things that we typically don't think of as productive as resting and

00:23:59.780 eating and celebrate yes i i agree but so but so so that kind of dimension is running a counterpoint

00:24:09.620 with with with with the other dimension which is that being idle is sinful so uh i i think that uh

00:24:17.300 yes that that that christianity does recognize the the festival weeks i mean there's the sabbath

00:24:25.540 also one day a week but the rest of the time we're supposed to be at work and laboring in the fields

00:24:34.020 is actually that's the the actual phrase in the bible laboring in the fields and but what's what's

00:24:39.540 interesting though that we talk about it it's being so productive all the time can be counterproductive

00:24:44.500 in the long run yes yeah it's an interesting irony there so i mean like i i think all of us can figure

00:24:52.260 out ways to be you know wait waste time on our private life right just unplug where you spend an

00:24:58.900 evening just not doing anything taking a walk playing with your kids etc but how did would you make this

00:25:05.060 case to say your boss say hey you know i need i need an hour and a half where i'm not doing anything

00:25:12.020 so i can think and mull on this problem we've had that's i mean that's a hard case to make because i

00:25:17.460 think a lot i mean the problem in the business world is you know what gets measured is that whatever

00:25:22.980 you know what's that saying what gets measured gets done right yeah so we're measuring productivity

00:25:27.620 emails answered etc slacks answered so it ends up we don't actually end up being productive yes well

00:25:35.220 it's it's a great point that you raise and a very important one and i think in the last 10 years that

00:25:41.620 a number of businesses in the us and other countries have actually experimented with giving their employees

00:25:49.220 some time to meditate and of course meditation is is only one form of unplugging but it but is one that

00:25:56.900 has been explored and the business businesses that have have instituted this as a practice have actually

00:26:05.460 found that it increases productivity when employees are given some time in the day to just be alone with

00:26:12.260 their thoughts another case in point is is bell laboratories which is the research arm of at&t before

00:26:20.500 at&t was was was broken up and bell laboratories at bell laboratories there was very little direction

00:26:28.500 for the employees it was just they were allowed to they were given laboratories and they were given

00:26:34.020 equipment and they were allowed to follow their own research interests without a designated project and

00:26:41.540 many great discoveries came out of bell laboratories for example in around 1950 the transistor was invented

00:26:49.460 which came out of bell laboratories and the the irony there is is giving the employees these are you know

00:26:58.180 employees in science and technology sort of unfettered free time to just invent and explore that they

00:27:05.860 actually brought great wealth they actually brought great wealth to at&t because the transistor is one

00:27:12.180 example has led to to all kinds of technology uh almost everything that we have today started with the the

00:27:19.780 the computers and the internet started with the transistor so i think smart businesses have have

00:27:27.780 have have learned that giving your employees some free time to to just explore pays off it pays off monetarily

00:27:38.340 people are just more productive when they have some time to themselves to let their minds wander of course

00:27:45.940 their minds are wandering on things that are related to the company but there's no project there's no schedule

00:27:52.900 and what i love how you ended the book you you talk about this distinction this distinction i've read

00:27:58.100 about this before but i like how you fleshed it out in ancient greece you know they had two conceptions of

00:28:04.740 time first was chronos time and then there was kairos time what what's the distinction between the

00:28:12.100 two those two types of time chronos time is time measured by the clock and and they did have clocks in

00:28:19.300 ancient greece they had sand clocks and water clocks it's it's regimented time 24 hours a day 60 minutes

00:28:28.180 in an hour 60 seconds in a minute and so on and and life is governed by the clock and chronos time

00:28:35.940 kairos time has nothing to do with clocks it has to do with human life and and human events its

00:28:43.380 movement is measured by events like like marriages or love affairs or meals or the births of babies

00:28:51.620 significant events you might have you know a few days pass with no kairos time passing at all with no

00:28:59.540 significant events so i i think the ancient greeks considered their leisure time to be kairos time when

00:29:07.540 they were not on the job when they were not working when they were just spending time eating or with

00:29:13.940 their families or taking walks uh that was all kairos time and they realized that there needs to be

00:29:20.260 a balance between chronos and kairos yeah i i think for me like kairos time are the things are those

00:29:28.740 moments i remember right whenever you're sort of letting your mind wander and you start thinking of

00:29:33.700 memories like those weird little memories you never thought you'd remember in the moment but

00:29:38.980 they come up for whatever reason like those are for me like our kairos moments yeah and and those those

00:29:47.780 moments probably don't come up to you while you're busy sending and receiving emails right no they don't

00:29:55.460 it's when i'm right before bed or i'm driving in the car or when i yeah when i'm not doing anything

00:30:01.140 when i'm wasting time right yeah yeah so alan this is this has been a good conversation where can

00:30:07.140 people go to learn more about the book and you know your your quest to let people waste more time

00:30:12.820 well the book is published by simon and schuster and it's just called in praise of wasting time

00:30:18.980 and i just published an essay in the washington post they have a a section called disinspired life and

00:30:26.420 there's an essay there that that talks about this i think that that i am certainly not alone at all

00:30:32.980 in my concern about the frantic pace of life and i think that there there are other thinkers and writers

00:30:40.900 who are writing about this that there's a book called distracted by maggie jackson which talks about

00:30:47.540 this phenomena the sociologist sherry turkle at mit has written a couple of books about the the

00:30:55.300 danger of being on the internet all of the time i think her most recent book is called alone together

00:31:01.780 so there there there are other people who are also concerned about this trend in our society to to

00:31:10.660 live faster and faster and be more and more plugged in all the time well alan thanks for coming on we

00:31:16.420 really appreciate it thank you brett thanks for having me on your your program my guest today was

00:31:20.900 alan lightman his book is in praise of wasting time it's available on amazon.com check it out also check

00:31:26.340 out our show notes at aom.is wasting time where you can find links to resources we can delve deeper into

00:31:31.860 to this topic well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips

00:31:48.500 and advice make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com and if

00:31:52.340 you enjoy the show you've gotten something out of it i'd appreciate if you give us review on itunes or

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00:32:00.340 a friend or family member who you would think would get something out of it as always thank you for

00:32:04.820 your continued support and until next time this is brett mckay telling you to stay manly

The Art of Manliness - November 14, 2018

#458： In Praise of Wasting Time

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