Is Wasting Time Really a Waste of Time?
Recently, I was on a business trip visiting one of my old haunts—the Marylebone district of London. It is the picture of “quaint old London.” Its a strange and wonderful concoction of new and old London, with the street Sherlock Holmes made famous—Baker Street— plus multiple Anglican churches ringing their antique bells on the hour, kindergartens full of gloriously laughing children, streets lined with weathered brown brick houses, and of course dozens of fabulous eateries. It’s classically chic—with the whole district replete in a certain shade of patina. It's what everyone thinks London is, yet it also has much of what London is not. And it’s become the basis of my business operations over the last few years.
Unfortunately, because of COVID-19, I had not been able to visit Marylebone much. So, upon my most recent visit, it occurred to me—why did I start basing myself out of Marylebone in the first place? After all, there are lots of other great areas in London. Why Marylebone?
Not to mention, most of my time in Marylebone involved chasing down strange deals, meeting with the wrong point of contact, conducting meetings about things that would never pan out, etc.
In short, much (if not most) of what I did in Marylebone was a complete waste of time.
Or was it?
The Art of Wasting Time
“Fail early, fail often, but always fail forward.”
-John C. Maxwell, American author and speaker
There are various types of wasting one’s time. When most people think of wasting time, they think of the “just screwing around” version of it. Frankly, I occasionally partake in that type of wasting of time—in fact, I rather enjoy it when the mood is right.
But that's not the kind of wasting time I wish to address today. Rather, it's the wasting of time that occurs when you are actually trying to do something productive, but can’t make it happen. Or someone blocks your path; Or you miscalculate; or you misplace the map which shows the path you were supposed to take. It's like putting our trust in Google maps to get you “there” only to find out that Google has no more idea of where “there” is than you do. Then that feeling of having wasted time sets in.
It can be irritating. I think of all of the other “better” things I could have been doing.
Which leads me back to Marylebone. I can think of about 50 days I spent there where I achieved nothing. Nada. Zilch. Oh, and did I mention all the money I spent doing nothing, nada, zilch? It turns out, wasting time can also be a waste of money. Was it all for naught? I think not!
You see, the question lies not with whether or not time was wasted in general, but why that time was wasted.
For the most part, I was trying to move the needle. I was not on vacation, after all. I was chasing deals, people, money—even ideas. When you do that, you don’t always achieve the immediate results you imagined. You get lost, you screw up, and you miscalculate. There might even be redundancies. In short, you fail, perhaps even often and early.
In the business world, it’s extremely hip to talk about failure as if it was the halcyon days, viewed only from afar through rose-tinted glasses. Many of my colleagues will talk about how failure makes you strong, gives you unique insights—even makes you more glamorous to your peers. After all, who wouldn’t wish to be seen as a conqueror of obstacles; a slayer of the fear of failure?
And I get why it’s so hip. I got my first taste of this attitude when I was a young buck in the oil industry, back in the 1970s. I was surrounded by old wildcatters, who would brag about how many dry wells they had to drill in order to find that gusher. To normal people, all this effort would seem like a waste of time and money. When in fact, the importance of this job made them so rich that they could wear their bright orange overalls to the best restaurants in town and nobody would bat an eye. Now THAT’S real wealth, partner!
Plus, I loved the fact that Santa Rita, the Patron Saint of lost and impossible causes, was their patron saint. To most of us, drilling dry holes might appear to be a complete waste of time and money. To those old wildcatters, it was part of their character and the basis of their mojo.
Is it that most of my days in Marylebone were about drilling dry holes, and that you have to drill a few of those before you strike your gusher? Curious…I did not focus on that small number of gushers I did hit while in Marylebone. There were those. Or that I might hit more in the future—I hear that it's still a producing field.
Alas, the human mind does not work like that. We have a fantastic capacity to focus on the downside. Psychologists back me up on this. It's called “Negativity Bias.” An evolutionary process that helps us avoid disaster by pre-empting any action or event with negative ideation. Wild, huh? Apply our natural negative bias to almost any block of time or effort in our lives, and it might feel like “wasting time.” But it's just not true.
Why Wasting Time is not Always a Waste of Time
My conclusion? “Wasting time” in Marylebone was not, in fact, a waste of time. Not because I received some incremental gain from my failure, or even that I became a more glamorous human being for bragging about all my hard work before I struck a gusher. Rather, my wasting of time was not a waste of time because I had fun during each and every one of those days I spent in Marylebone. It was, (and is) a most interesting place; it’s kinetic, time-honored, hip, and cool as well as very English, all at once. Regardless of the work that I was trying to do in Marylebone, I developed such an attachment to the place—after all, just being there was a source of happiness. So, when I think about my days in Marylebone, I smile. Ah, smiling—that’s the gusher I have been seeking. Santa Rita blesses me. It turns out that wasting time is not wasting time at all.