Today’s reflection is about a small change that may have a major effect on your life satisfaction, and perhaps serve as a post–New Year’s resolution: to waste less time. Or, to articulate it positively, to spend discretionary time more fruitfully.

I hesitate to say more productively, as that feels too narrow. Yes, let’s spend time productively, but also happily. In ways that leave us with something meaningful: a good feeling, a creative spark, a sense of renewal.

Across the years, roughly half of American adults say they don’t have enough time to complete work assignments, do chores, take care of self and family, and to have something left over to relax and recharge. Yet many of us also know how much time quietly slips away online, scrolling without purpose. In fact, almost the same percentage of Americans endorse spending too much time on social media.

Here lies the contradiction: we feel starved for time while continually giving it away. Of course, not all time online is wasted; catching up with friends or reading the news can be genuine leisure. But often, that time leaves us feeling drained, not restored. I know. I’ve felt it myself. I don’t merely feel that I have little to show for my time spent, but that it has left me worse off.

This mashup between having too little time and wasting time has a reason. Modern life leaves us with isolated pockets of free time that don’t seem long enough to use well or productively. Fifteen minutes after lunch. Five minutes between patients. Half an hour before picking up the kids.

The solution is to reclaim those small islands of time with intention. Think ahead about the tiny and not-so-tiny tasks that fit into five-, fifteen-, or thirty-minute windows: whether they reduce your to-do list or increase your well-being. If we’re not prepared to use our time well when an opportunity arises, we’re likely to revert to our not-so-generative habits.

One aspect of this I wish to stress: these “tasks” that we can complete during free time, need not be limited to work tasks or chores. They can, and I think they should, include things we want to do for ourselves.

For example, in a few minutes, you can:

    • Read a poem or an uplifting passage and then contemplate it, then and throughout the day
    • Think about the plot of the screenplay you’re writing and jot down or record your notes
    • Leave a message to someone you care about, telling them you’re thinking of them
    • Do an exercise ‘snack’, that is, a 1-2 minute exercise that can be done, for instance, between patients: pushups, curls, stretches, etc. If you’re in the right environment and in the right clothes, you can do sprints – near maximal effort for 30-50 seconds
    • Do deep breathing or sit in meditation
    • Go outside and look at the sky. I’m not kidding. It places your daily concerns into perspective and allows you to separate yourself from them to a healthy degree

This is a nice New Year’s resolution. It’s simple, doesn’t take additional time, can have deep results, and provides plenty of opportunities to try it out, sometimes failing, sometimes succeeding.

So, once again, a Happy New Year, and may your time feel well spent.

Until next time,
Dr. Jack

Quotes of the Week

“The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.” – Stephen R. Covey

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” – Annie Dillard

“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” – Simone Weil

“Beware the barrenness of a busy life.” – Socrates

“It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste much of it.” – Seneca