Time

How do you spend your time?

Time is the most valuable resource we have. Every moment of time we spend doing something we don't enjoy should be well be worth the tradeoff.

"I don't own a watch because I want my arms to weigh the same." -Mitch Hedberg, Strategic Grill Locations

Time Well Spent

Good uses of time include being with friends, family, sit-down meals, hobbies, vacations, fulfilling work, sex, altruism, community building, education (teaching or learning), exercise, music, art, reading books, psychedelics, and revolution.

Wasting Time

There are only so many seconds in a lifetime. Yet, many of us spend huge portions of these seconds doing things that don't make us happy. Why is that?

"The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time." -Bertrand Russell

Systemic Necessity

Everyone needs to work, but the balance between the capitalist economy and the limits set by our government determine how hard everyone has to work. A 30 hour work week that pays a living wage is more than feasible if there was the political will to make it so. 6+ weeks paid vacation, paid maternity and paternity leave, are also totally doable and are being done in many countries that are happier than the United States. Our current system forces us to spend much more time and energy at work than it needs to. This steals time from every worker, even if they happen to love their job.

Physical Necessity

We need to rest, and are often too tired from work and other activities to have the energy for anything positive (see aforementioned Systemic Necessities).

We also need to eat, but that should be a primary source of happiness! When the systemic constraints on time, money, and food options make good eating impossible, potentially valuable time becomes wasted, along with our health.

We need slack! It is starting to be recognized the physical necessity that it is. It is unfortunate that the strongest argument for leisure time is that it makes us more productive, but that's capitalism!

Using the restroom is another physical necessity. Don't try to save time by using piss jugs.

Social Necessity

When we spend time on our obligations to others, these should always be a source of happiness. If they aren't then either your time is being taken advantage of, or you have a bad attitude about helping your family, friends, or community.

Granted there are situations like having to take long-term care of a family member who has treated you terribly. In cases like this the bad attitude is understandable, even if it still only hurts yourself.

Unnecessity

We waste a lot of time out of laziness and addiction. Addiction to social media is the biggest time waster of the modern era. The emotional satisfaction per time spent on social media is so much lower than any in-person activity you might engage in.

Drug addiction will waste a lot of time, and money. It would waste significantly less of both if drugs were legal, giving addicts back the time they need to do more drugs. Or hold down a job. The constant search to see who is holding can really throw off your work/addiction balance, even if you are a "functional" addict whose ability to work is not impaired.

Time Well Spent - Why Less is More with Oliver Burkeman

The Time You Have (In JellyBeans)

How We Spend Our Days

The Time Shift of Consciousness

The brain needs to be able to react to its environment in real time, even though it takes time to process the signals from our senses and determine that reaction. How do we reconcile the difference between when things are actually happening, and when we are able to perceive those events and react to them? This episode of Inner Cosmos explores how the brain is able to do this, and when it sometimes goes wrong.

How do we operate in the present when we perceive the past?

What is Time?

A good explanation of Time is not easy to come by. Read the time wiki page and you don't really get a good idea of what it really is and where it comes from. It's the 4th dimension, but what does that even mean? And how does relativity makes it slow down when you go fast?

This author was about to make such an attempt when the lecture by Sean Carroll below was discovered and dashed any hope of providing additional insight or examples that would be more illuminating.

Neil deGrasse Tyson gives a shorter, simpler explanation. But the longer video above is well worth the watch.

A Time for Everything

Say whatever you want about the Bible, you can't deny Ecclesiastes 3 is a banger.

There is a time for everything,

and a season for every activity under the heavens:

a time to be born and a time to die,

a time to plant and a time to uproot,

a time to kill and a time to heal,

a time to tear down and a time to build,

a time to weep and a time to laugh,

a time to mourn and a time to dance,

a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,

a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,

a time to search and a time to give up,

a time to keep and a time to throw away,

a time to tear and a time to mend,

a time to be silent and a time to speak,

a time to love and a time to hate,

a time for war and a time for peace.

Music Time

Now is the time on the wiki when we dance.

The Byrds - Turn! Turn! Turn!

On the subjective experience of time.