Time you enjoyed wasting, is not time wasted!
This took me a third of my life to learn this, well, until after my 30th birthday. I was a doer. I still am but these days I do more of what I love instead of what I think I should be doing. And crazily enough, my whole life is more successful, in the way that success is meaningful to me.
This is an odd concept, that you should being doing this, or that and if you aren’t then you won’t be successful. Here is a crazy thought, you might be more successful if you make time for play as well as work, if you do the things that light you up but don’t actually move the needle in your success. I have known this for a long time but I didn’t actually use it in my life that much. I was too addicted to the doing to create success, whatever that was.
I was such a doer that I wrote a list of goals for the month, the week, the day and I didn’t get to play or do anything that I loved until they were all done. I would grind away and push myself and my personal sanity until all the doing was done and then there was always more to do. It was a dynamic list, ever growing as I was ticking things off.
I would have fun sometimes but it was scheduled, which is kind of a joke. Scheduled fun. This made me feel like I was getting closer and closer to success but in reality, it was pushing me further away from it. I was so focused on just one kind of success that I deliberately ignored the rest. But I now know that sustainable, enjoyable and meaningful success comes from your whole life being successful; work, play, self, family. You need to create space in your life for it all and when you have harmony inward, the outward success comes more easily. Whatever that success looks like for you.
If you are doing something that you enjoy, are you really wasting time? Creating art that you don’t want to make money from, reading a fluffy fiction novel, watching a tv series that you love, laying in the sun and doing nothing. Don’t you feel refreshed afterwards? I certainly do. I now create time and space in my life for time wasting because it isn’t actually wasted when you are enjoying it. It is lighting you up and bringing you back to your family or work, as better version of yourself. You are calmer, happier and brighter and so much more enjoyable.