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500-word on Why I Won't Waste Your Time

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Published: Jun 24, 2024

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Essay on Time Waste is Life Waste

Students are often asked to write an essay on Time Waste is Life Waste in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Time Waste is Life Waste

Understanding time.

Time is a precious gift that we all have. It is like a river that keeps flowing and never stops. Once a moment passes, it never comes back. So, wasting time is like wasting a part of our life that we can never get back.

The Value of Time

Time is more valuable than money. We can earn money that we have lost, but we can never get back the time we have lost. So, we should always try to use our time wisely. We should not waste it on useless things.

Time Management

Managing our time properly can help us achieve our goals. We should make a plan for each day and try to stick to it. This way, we can make sure that we are not wasting our time.

Effects of Wasting Time

When we waste our time, we are wasting our life. We miss out on opportunities to learn, grow, and achieve our dreams. It also leads to stress and frustration because we are not able to complete our tasks on time.

250 Words Essay on Time Waste is Life Waste

Introduction.

Time is a valuable gift given to us by nature. It is often said that “Time is gold”, which means that every moment is precious. The phrase “Time Waste is Life Waste” highlights the importance of time in our lives.

Understanding Time Waste

Time waste means not using time wisely. This can include spending too much time on unproductive activities, like watching too much TV or playing games for hours. When we waste time, we lose opportunities. We miss out on learning, growing, and achieving our goals.

How Time Waste Leads to Life Waste

Life is a beautiful journey filled with experiences and learning. We have limited time to live, learn, and enjoy. When we waste time, we waste parts of our life. We lose chances to learn new things, meet new people, and make a difference in the world.

To avoid wasting our life, we must value our time. We should use it wisely to learn, grow, and contribute to society. Remember, time once gone can never be brought back. So, let’s make every moment count and live our life to the fullest. In this way, we can truly understand and appreciate the saying, “Time Waste is Life Waste”.

500 Words Essay on Time Waste is Life Waste

Time is a valuable gift given to us by nature. It is a continuous flow, like a river. Like a river that doesn’t stop, time does not wait for anyone. It is always moving forward. The saying “Time Waste is Life Waste” reminds us of the importance of time in our lives.

Understanding the Value of Time

Time and success.

Successful people and great leaders always value time. They know that time is limited and they must make the best use of it. People who waste time often find themselves lagging behind. They miss opportunities and fail to achieve their goals. On the other hand, those who use time wisely achieve success and happiness in life. Therefore, to lead a successful life, it is important to use time wisely and avoid wasting it.

Time Waste in Daily Life

In our daily life, we often waste time without realizing it. For example, spending too much time on unimportant activities like watching TV, playing games, or using social media can be a waste of time. These activities do not contribute to our growth or help us achieve our goals. If we spend our time on useful activities like studying, learning new skills, or helping others, we can make our lives more meaningful and successful.

How to Avoid Wasting Time

In conclusion, time is a precious resource that we should not waste. “Time Waste is Life Waste” is a powerful saying that reminds us of the importance of time. If we waste time, we waste our lives. Therefore, we should use our time wisely to lead a successful and meaningful life. Remember, time is like a sword. If you don’t cut it, it will cut you. So, let’s cut our time wisely and make the best use of it.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

Happy studying!

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Essay On Time for Students and Children

500+ words essay on time.

Essay On Time – Time is very precious and we should not waste it in any way. Likewise, we can earn the money we spent but we cannot get back the time we have lost. So, this makes the time more valuable than money. Hence, we should utilize the time in the most possible way.

Importance of Time

This the most valuable and precious thing in the world. Also, we should use it for our good as well as for the good of others around us. This will help us and the society to progress towards a better tomorrow. Moreover, we should teach our children the importance and value of time. Also, wasting time will only lead you to cause an issue to you and the people around you.

Effective Utilization of Time

For effectively utilizing the time we must consider some points which will help us in our whole life. This utilization includes setting goals, prepare work lists, prioritize task, and take adequate sleep and various others.

For effectively utilizing time set long and short term goals these goals will help you in remaining productive. Moreover, they will prove as a driving force that will keep you motivated. Also, this will give the willingness to achieve something in life.

In the beginning, it will feel like a boring task but when you do it regularly then you will realize that that it only helps you to increase your productivity. Ultimately, this will force you to achieve more in life.

Prioritizing task is a very effective way of managing time. Also, because of it, you will know the importance of various task and jobs. Apart from that, if your club and perform a similar activity in a go then it also increases your productivity. Hence, it will help you to achieve more in life.

Being productive does not mean that you engage yourself in different tasks every time. Taking proper sleep and exercising is also part of being productive. Besides, proper exercise and sleep maintain a balance between body and mind which is very important for being productive and efficient.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Value of Time

Although most people do not understand how valuable time is until they lost it. Besides, there are people in the world who prioritize money over time because according to them, time is nothing. But, they do not realize the fact that it is time that has given them the opportunity to earn money. Apart from this, the time has given us prosperity and happiness and on the contrary, it has also given us sorrow and grief.

Power of Time

In previous time many kings proclaim themselves as the ruler of their age and all. But, they forget that they have limited time. Time is the only thing in the world that is limitless. Time can make you a king or a beggar in a movement of seconds.

In conclusion, we can say that time is the greatest gift of God. Moreover, there is a saying that “if you waste time, time will waste you.” Only this line is enough to justify how important and valuable time is.

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Essays About Time: Top 5 Examples and 8 Prompts

Essays about time involve looking into human existence and other intangible concepts. Check out our top examples and prompts to write an engaging piece about this subject.

Time entails many concepts that can be hard to explain. In its simplest sense, time is the period between the past, present, and future. It also encompasses every action or progression of events within those measures. Time never stops. It consistently ticks away, making it both a cruel teacher and an apt healer. It inspires many writers to write pieces about it, discussing time as a notion or an element in emotionally-driven compositions that both describe euphoric and heart-rending episodes. 

To aid you in writing a compelling piece, below are our top picks for great essays about time:

1. Time is Precious Essay by Anonymous on AreSearchGuide.com

2. an essay on time by david pincus, 3. time is money by supriya, 4. time waster by anonymous on exampleessays.com, 5. time management: using the less time to do more by anonymous on edubirdie.com, 1. how i spend my time, 2. what is time, 3. time and technology, 4. time management and procrastination, 5. if time doesn’t exist, 6. time as a currency, 7. the value of time, 8. time and productivity.

“Make most of your time and you will be rewarded ten folds of it, waste it and the little you have will be taken away, just like in the parable of talents.”

The essay begins with a convincing statement reminding the readers of the average life expectancy of a person to assert the importance of time. Then, in the later sections, the author answers why time is precious. Some reasons include time is always in motion, is priceless, and can never be borrowed. The piece also mentions why many “wait for the right opportunity,” not realizing they must plan first to get to the “right time.” Finally, at the end of the essay, the writer reminds us that balancing and planning how to spend time in all areas of life are critical to having a meaningful existence.

“I don’t know what time is, beyond a mysterious self-similar backdrop upon which we lead our lives. It is intricately woven across the scales of observation – from the quantum level to the phenomenological time of cultural revolutions.”

Pincus begins the essay with questions about time and then proceeds to answer them. Then, he focuses on time psychologically, relating it to traumas, disorders, and lack of meaning. In the next section, he discusses how psychotherapists use the concept of time to treat patients. 

In the last part of his essay, Pincus admits that he doesn’t know what time is but notes it’s akin to a thread that stitches moments together and anchors us through a complex world.

“Knowing how precious time is, we should never waste time, but make good use of it.”

Supriya’s essay is straightforward. After claiming that someone’s success depends on how they use their time, she gives an example of a student who studied well and passed an exam quickly. She follows it with more examples, referring to office workers and the famous and wealthy.

“Time is something you can’t have back, and should not be used to simply watch a computer screen for hours upon end.”

The writer shares one of his vices that leads him to waste time – technology, specifically, instant messaging. They mention how unproductive it is to just stare at a computer screen to wait for their friends to go online. They know many others have the same problem and hope to overcome the bad habit soon.

“I should strive for good time management skills which are essential to be learned and mastered in order to have a better personal and professional life… it can also help us learn more about self-discipline which is a crucial pillar for stable success… time management is a concept of balance and moderation of the things that are important to us.”

The essay affirms people need to protect time, as it’s a non-renewable resource. A great way to do it is by tracking your time, also known as time management. The writer shared their experience when they were a college student and how challenging it was to allocate their time between deadlines and other life demands. The following parts of the piece explain what time management is in detail, even recommending a tool to help individuals label their activities based on urgency. The following paragraphs focus on what the author learned about time management throughout their life and how they missed opportunities while continuously being stressed. Then, the last part of the essay suggests tips to conquer time management problems. 

Did you know that readability is critical to readers finishing your whole essay? See our article on how to improve your readability score to learn more. 

8 Writing Prompts For Essays About Time

Go through our recommended prompts on essays about time for writing:

In this essay, share how you use your time on a typical day. Then, decide if you want to keep spending your time doing the same things in the future. If not, tell your readers the reason. For instance, if you’re devoting most of your time studying now, you can say that you intend to use your future time doing other invaluable things, such as working hard to help your family.

Because there are many definitions of time, use this essay to define your interpretation of time. You can use creative writing and personify time to make your essay easy to understand. For example, you can think of time as a personal tutor who always reminds you of the things you should be able to finish within the day. For an engaging essay, use descriptive language to emphasize your points.

List technologies that help people save time, such as smartphones, computers, and the internet. Delve into how these devices help individuals complete their tasks faster. On the other hand, you can also talk about how modernization negatively affects people’s time management. Like when they distract students and workers from completing their assignments.

Discuss reasons why people procrastinate. First, ensure to pick common causes so your readers can easily relate to your piece. Then, add tips on how individuals can battle dilly-dallying by recommending influential time management theories and models. You can even try some of these theories or models and tell your readers how they worked for you. 

Open a discussion about what can happen if there is no concept of time. Include what matters you think will be affected if time is abolished. You can also debate that time does not exist, that it’s just created by people to keep track of whatever they need to monitor. Finally, add your thoughts on the notion that “we only exist within an ever-changing now.”

Share your ideas of what can take place if we use “time” to buy food, pay rent, etc. You can also analyze that when we use our time to work, get paid for it, and then purchase our necessities, we’re technically exchanging our time to be able to buy what we need. A movie that used this theory is In Time , starring Justin Timberlake, Amanda Seyfried, and Cillian Murphy. You can write a review of this movie and add your opinions on it.

Everyone’s aware of the importance of time. For this prompt, delve into why time is precious. Write this essay from your perspective and probe how time, such as managing or wasting it, affects your life. You can also interpret this prompt by calculating the non-monetary or opportunity costs of spending time. 

Examine the direct relationship between time and productivity. Then, list productivity strategies schools and businesses use. You can also open a discourse about the number of hours workers are supposed to work in a week. For example, debate if you think a 40-hour full-time work week in America, results in more productive employees. Then, add other schedules from other countries and how it affects productivity, such as Denmark, Germany, and Norway, with less than 30 hours of the work week. 

Do you want to know how to convince your readers effectively? Read our guide on how to write an argumentative essay . Improve your writing skills; check out our guide packed full of transition words for essays .

Essay on Importance of Time For Students in 1000 Words

In this article you will read an essay on importance of time for students and children in 1000 words. It includes information like time management importance, students’ lives and time, time-saving daily activities, 10 lines, and a conclusion.

Table of Contents

Essay on Importance of Time (1000 Words)

Time is the most valuable and precious for every individual out there, and we should not waste time . We should try our best to use the time effectively and positively. 

Importance of Time Management

As our great grandparents and parents say “Time is money, and it’s a treasure, and we need to utilize it very wisely”. 

If we spoil and destroy the time then it also does the same thing, and it will destroy us very badly. Indeed, time never waits for anyone . Time gives only one chance at that time if we lose it once, then we lose it forever, and it can never be returned. 

Time management helps you want to achieve at a faster rate. After knowing the importance of time management, you gain the motivation to sit around and pursue your goals . As a result of your hard work, you get a chance to reach your goal faster. 

Importance of Time For Students

Proper time management also reflects on the health of an individual. When they manage their time effectively, then they don’t need to stay up late and finish their tasks. Students must consider this fact and realize its importance. 

Few Daily Activities To Save Time

Our lives become more and more hectic, and it’s impossible to check off everything on the to-do list. There are some ways following which you can save time on your daily to-do-list by working harder and smarter. 

Use the tool designed for the jobs- you need to use the right tools as it is going to make all the difference. The new and specific tools help you be more productive and effective. These tools make the tasks more productive and effective. 

10 Lines on Importance of Time

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241 – What Does It Mean to Waste Time?

by Domyo | Jun 16, 2023 | Buddhist Practice

Buddhist and Zen masters through the ages have begged us not to “waste time.” What does this really mean? How do we know if we’re wasting time, and does it really matter?

Quicklinks to Article Content: The Precious Opportunity of Human Life The Teaching “Do Not Waste Time” Interpreting “Wasting Time” for a Lay Life Living in the Floating World without Wasting Time Knowing for Ourselves when We’re Wasting Time How to Not Waste Time

As I have shared on the podcast a number of times before, there is a short verse that is often chanted in Zen monasteries at the very end of the day, before people go off to sleep:

Let me respectfully remind you, Life and death are of supreme importance. Time swiftly passes by and opportunity is lost. Each of us should strive to awaken. . . . . . awaken, take heed. Do not squander your life.”

In Episode 215 ( We Will Die Soon: Contemplating Impermanence to Motivate Practice ) I talked about how contemplating impermanence – specifically our own mortality, which we will encounter much sooner than we expect – can lend to a sense of urgency to our practice. In this episode I want to explore in more depth the idea of “squandering your life” or “wasting time.” Buddhist and Zen masters through the ages have begged us not to “waste time.” What does this really mean? How do we know if we’re wasting time, and does it really matter?

The Precious Opportunity of Human Life

Having received a human life, do not waste the passing moments. Already upholding the buddha way, why would you indulge in the sparks from a flint? After all, form is like a dewdrop on the grass. Human life is like a flash of lightning, transient and illusory, gone in a moment.” [i]

In Buddhism, being born as a human has always been regarded as a precious and rare opportunity. Being human and encountering the Dharma (the Buddhist teaching) is believed to be even more remarkable. In the Pali Canon Chiggala Sutta (The Hole; this translation by Thanissaro Bhikkhu ), the Buddha says:

“Monks, suppose that this great earth were totally covered with water, and a man were to toss a yoke with a single hole there. A wind from the east would push it west, a wind from the west would push it east. A wind from the north would push it south, a wind from the south would push it north. And suppose a blind sea-turtle were there. It would come to the surface once every one hundred years. Now what do you think: would that blind sea-turtle, coming to the surface once every one hundred years, stick his neck into the yoke with a single hole?” “It would be a sheer coincidence, lord, that the blind sea-turtle, coming to the surface once every one hundred years, would stick his neck into the yoke with a single hole.” [ii]

Buddha says it is likewise a sheer coincidence that we attain the human state, and that we encounter the Dharma .

An unusual and fortunate alignment of circumstances allows us to practice deeply. If you had been born as a dog, or a fly, you would probably not have the intelligence, self-awareness, or spiritual aspiration to practice. If you had been born into difficult circumstances – for example, into slavery, in extreme poverty, or in the middle of a war zone – you might not have the freedom, time, or resources to sit meditation, study the Dharma , or spend time with Sangha . If you had not encountered Buddhist teachings and teachers, perhaps you would have found some other spiritual path, even one of your own making, but if you’re anything like me, you feel incredibly grateful for Buddhism and meditation.

What is it we’re supposed to be doing with this precious human life? We are aiming to awaken to Reality-with-a-Capital-R and thus attain liberation from dukkha , which can be translated as stress, dis-ease, dissatisfactoriness, or suffering. These goals may sound lofty or transcendent – and thus beyond the reach of ordinary mortals – but if you understand what awakening and liberation truly are, you’ll realize that these aspirations are profoundly relevant to all of us.

As I discussed in Episode 143 – The Experience of Enlightenment and Why It’s for All of Us , it is easy to develop dualistic, ego-based ideas about awakening. We may come to think the goal of practice is an experience or an understanding that is attained by some and not by others, and that if we manage to awaken, we’ll be aware of a distinct before and after. In reality, however, awakening is a deepening of intimacy, a widening of perspective, an increasing willingness to let go of our mental map of reality, a growing familiarity with things-as-it-is, or Reality-with-a-Capital-R. The liberation we experience is liberation from the constrained, fearful dream of self. It allows us to see more clearly, be more aware, and respond with more compassion.

The Teaching “Do Not Waste Time”

Assuming that you aspire to at least some measure of the kind of awakening and liberation I just described, what does it mean to waste time?

According to my search of 13 th -century Japanese Zen Master Dogen ’s Shobogenzo (Kindle version, translated by Kaz Tanahashi, which you can search), Dogen mentions wasting time, or wasting the opportunity of this human life, 32 times (true, the Shobogenzo is a voluminous collection of essays). Here’s one of his most beautiful passages about it, from the essay “Continuous Practice” (this translation by Kaz Tanahashi):

Even when you are uncertain, do not use this one day wastefully. It is a rare treasure to value. Do not compare it to an enormous jewel. Do not compare it to a dragon’s bright pearl. Old sages valued this one day more than their own living bodies. Reflect on this quietly. A dragon’s pearl may be found. An enormous jewel may be acquired. But this one day out of a hundred years cannot be retrieved once it is lost. What skillful means can retrieve a day that has passed? No historical documents have recorded any such means. Not to waste time is to contain the passage of days and months within your skin bag without leaking. Thus, sages and wise ones in olden times valued each moment, each day, and each month more than their own eyeballs or the nation’s land. To waste the passage of time is to be confused and stained in the floating world of name and gain. Not to miss the passage of time is to be in the way for the sake of the way. [iii]

So, each day, each moment, is precious and will never be experienced again. I think this makes sense to most of us, even if we tend to forget it much of the time. Less obvious is what Dogen meant when he described wasting time as being “confused and stained in the floating world of name and gain” and not wasting time as containing “the passage of days and months within your skin bag without leaking” and “to be in the way for the sake of the way.”

Dogen goes on at length in the essay “Continuous Practice,” about forsaking “name and gain” for the sake of practice. He continues:

Just forsake name and gain forever and don’t be bound by myriad conditions. Do not waste the passing time. Brush off the fire on top of your head… [iv]

In Buddhism, “name and gain” refer to many, if not most, of the self-centered concerns that tend to occupy us in our everyday life. “Name” is anything that builds up our sense of self, including reputation, status, power, and special relationships (that is, relationships in which we are one of the most important people in the life of someone else). “Gain” is anything we desire and can procure, including wealth, pleasure, and comfort. Presumably we all have concerns which are more altruistic and generous, but most of our activities include desire for name and gain in at least some measure.

Dogen (along with many other Buddhist and Zen teachers through the ages) exhorts us to “forsake” – that is, give up, renounce, leave behind – name and gain forever. To be honest, he is encouraging people to become monastics. In the next section of “Continuous Practice,” Dogen says:

If you have a home, leave your home. If you have beloved ones, leave them. If you have fame, abandon it. If you have gain, escape from it. If you have fields, get rid of them. If you have relatives, separate from them. If you don’t have name and gain, stay away from them… This is the single track of continuous practice. [v]

Dogen seems to be implying that spending time and energy on home, loved ones, fame, gain, and even our responsibilities is wasting time. Only when we abandon all these things can we take full advantage of this precious human life and concentrate on practicing with urgency, as if such practice is “putting out a fire on our head.”

Yikes! This seems like a pretty harsh statement. Sadly, I think many people are suspicious that devoutly religious people, Buddhist or non-Buddhist, think like Dogen seems to be in this essay – that if you enjoy your life and engage fully in the world, you are involved in “lesser” activities and aren’t as “spiritual” as you could be. Thanks to messages like Dogen ’s, we may end up internalizing a subtle sense of judgment about our worldly activities, either feeling vaguely guilty, inferior, or defensive about them, or adopting a defiant stance that rejects what we perceive as judgmental or constipated religiosity.

Interpreting “Wasting Time” for a Lay Life

Let’s examine more closely about what the recommendation to renounce all worldly affairs means for the lay Buddhist who sincerely wants to practice. Very, very few Buddhists in the world today – even most of us who are technically “ordained” – actually live a fully renunciate lifestyle. Does that mean we are ignoring a fundamental aspect of Buddhist teaching for our own pleasure and comfort, or because we are afraid of renunciation? Are we just wasting time, taking pleasure in the world? Some people might answer “yes” to these questions, but I think it is legitimate to interpret the teachings for ourselves. To stick only to the literal reading of texts and teachings is a kind of fundamentalism which can be harmful.

So, let’s start out with the premise that it is not necessary to literally forsake all worldly relationships and affairs in order to practice. After all, according to the ancient texts, the Buddha himself taught lay people and acknowledged their deep spiritual attainment. As I discussed in Episode 17 – Buddhist History 5: Life of Shakyamuni Buddha Part 3 – Early Teaching and Sangha , early Buddhists believed you needed to practice as a monastic in order to achieve complete and final release from rebirth after your death, but as a “householder” you could achieve more or less perfect awakening and then finish up by coming back for one more lifetime as a monastic.

The emphasis in Buddhism – from back in the Buddha ’s time until now – is that literal renunciation of worldly pursuits, relationships, and responsibilities makes it easier to practice. Frankly, I suspect many committed lay practitioners would agree with this! It’s much easier to calm the mind, settle into meditation, study the teachings, and fundamentally challenge your view of reality when you’re in a silent meditation retreat, or staying in a monastery. Ordinary daily life involves countless responsibilities, distractions, and challenges. The fuller our life, the more activities and interests compete with anything we can identify as formal practice. It’s more difficult to be mindful when our minds are busy with planning, anticipation, and concerns about things like finances, work, family, friends, pets, hobbies, home improvements, or travel.

If literal renunciation makes practice easier but isn’t strictly necessary, what message can we take from Dogen ’s recommendation to forsake name and gain in order not to waste time? He says, “To waste the passage of time is to be confused and stained in the floating world of name and gain.” [vi] Aha! So maybe it’s possible to live in the floating world of name and gain without being confused and stained!

Let’s examine, then, what it might mean to be “confused” and “stained” by worldly affairs. I suspect we’re all familiar with how this feels. We are buffeted about by what Buddhists call the Eight Worldly Winds – Gain, Loss, Status, Disgrace, Praise, Censure, Pleasure, Pain – sometimes experiencing the heights of happiness, bliss, contentment, love, satisfaction, inspiration, etc., but sometimes experiencing the depths of grief, despair, pain, anger, humiliation, fear, etc. All of this can be confusing to say the least. We may lose track of what is most important as we seek to obtain and hold onto what brings us happiness, and to avoid that which causes pain. We may lose track of ourselves.

When I read the word “stained,” I think of how something becomes colored by another thing in a way that is unintended – in a way that compromises cleanliness and beauty. What might it mean to allow ourselves to become stained by the world of name and gain?

When I offered this talk at Bright Way Zen, these are the kinds of things people brainstormed that we do when we are confused and stained in this floating world, or wasting time:

Relitigating old arguments; repeating old, negative habits; failing to appreciate what we have, or what’s going on, while searching for something more stimulating or pleasurable; procrastinating; acting in ways not in alignment with our highest values and deepest priorities; being inauthentic; feeling restless; mindlessly engaging in an activity more than is healthy, like scrolling through social media or watching the news; dwelling obsessively on a disappointment or source of anger; missing valuable moments of life while your mind is wandering over random or negative subjects; complaining; justifying your actions or attitude at length; worrying or catastrophizing; overthinking things.

Of course, this list could go on. When we waste time in these ways, in what sense are we “stained” by world of name and gain? As we engage in the world – taking on responsibilities, accumulating wealth and property, building relationships, seeking and enjoying pleasurable things, undertaking projects to improve our lives or the world – it is difficult not to become attached to beings, things, and outcomes. It is challenging to be engaged and active without getting caught up in the pursuit of “name” – that which builds up our sense of self – or the pursuit of “gain” – that which we want to get or keep for the sake of self. Once our activities are suffused with self-interest, we easily fall into habits like relitigating old arguments or worrying. When we’re so accustomed to operating out of self-interest, we easily lose enthusiasm for anything that doesn’t appear to hold the promise of significant excitement or reward for the self; our attention wanders, and we fall into bad habits or grow restless.

Living in the Floating World without Wasting Time

What does it mean to live in the floating world without wasting time – without becoming confused or stained? When Dogen describes the world of name and gain as “floating,” he is referring to the fleeting, transient, ungraspable nature of life. What would it be like if we remained thoroughly engaged in the world while fully cognizant of its ephemeral, ungraspable nature? What would it be like if we did our work, took care of our responsibilities, maintained our relationships, and enjoyed whatever good fortune we have without using any of it to build up our sense of self, without striving to gain more, without expecting to hold on to what is impermanent?

There is a significant message even for lay Buddhists in the model of renunciation. Monastics (in an ideal sense, at least) live without personal possessions, private property, worldly status or power, wealth, and most of the things that are primary sources of pleasure for householders such as family relationships, sex, adornments, nice clothes, etc. In the strictest forms of monasticism, monks and nuns may not handle money, listen to music, or eat anything that isn’t prepared and donated to them. And yet (again, in an ideal sense) they are profoundly satisfied and at peace. The message? None of our worldly pleasures are necessary for the most profound and abiding sense of fulfillment.

Theoretically, at least, we can navigate our lives without getting confused about who we are and what really matters, without allowing ourselves to get attached and self-centered. What would that look like? Maybe we can get some idea from the Vimalakirti Sutra , one of the earliest Mahayana Sutras , which is about a layman named Vimalakirti who was an acclaimed practitioner of the Dharma . In the sutra , Vimalakirti was sick, so the Buddha asked his disciples to go visit the layman and send his regards. One by one, 500 arhat disciples and countless bodhisattva disciples explain to the Buddha they’re too intimidated to go visit Vimalakirti. Each one gives a story of an interaction they had with Vimalakirti which displayed how the layman’s understanding of the Dharma completely outshined their own (the sutra contains about a dozen of these stories, but says every disciple had one). Finally, Manjushri, the bodhisattva of wisdom, says he’s willing to risk embarrassment to go visit Vimalakirti.

I’m going to share an excerpt from the description of Vimalakirti from the translation of the sutra by Robert Thurman. I recommend avoiding making Vimalakirti into an ideal of perfection that discourages us because it seems so impossible. Instead, as we review the description, notice how your own heart is moved toward aspiration, what deeper desires are within you. Vimalakirti is being presented as a remarkable person who manifests all of these qualities and skills, but any one of them is admirable and worthy, and each one of us has different strengths and affinities:

He had penetrated the profound way of the Dharma . He was liberated through the transcendence of wisdom… Having integrated his realization with skill in liberative technique, he was expert in knowing the thoughts and actions of living beings. Knowing the strength or weakness of their faculties, and being gifted with unrivaled eloquence, he taught the Dharma appropriately to each…   He lived with the deportment of a Buddha , and his superior intelligence was as wide as an ocean… His wealth was inexhaustible for the purpose of sustaining the poor and the helpless. He observed a pure morality in order to protect the immoral. He maintained tolerance and self-control in order to reconcile beings who were angry, cruel, violent, and brutal. He blazed with energy in order to inspire people who were lazy. He maintained concentration, mindfulness , and meditation in order to sustain the mentally troubled…   He wore the white clothes of the layman, yet lived impeccably like a religious devotee. He lived at home, but remained aloof from the realm of desire… He had a son, a wife, and female attendants, yet always maintained continence. He appeared to be surrounded by servants, yet lived in solitude… He seemed to eat and drink, yet always took nourishment from the taste of meditation. He made his appearance at the fields of sports and in the casinos, but his aim was always to mature those people who were attached to games and gambling… He understood the mundane and transcendental sciences and esoteric practices, yet always took pleasure in the delights of the Dharma …   He engaged in all sorts of businesses, yet had no interest in profit or possessions. To train living beings, he would appear at crossroads and on street corners, and to protect them he participated in government… He was honored as the businessman among businessmen because he demonstrated the priority of the Dharma . He was honored as the landlord among landlords because he renounced the aggressiveness of ownership. He was honored as the warrior among warriors because he cultivated endurance, determination, and fortitude. He was honored as the aristocrat among aristocrats because he suppressed pride, vanity, and arrogance… He was compatible with ordinary people because he appreciated the excellence of ordinary merits… [vii]

Knowing for Ourselves when We’re Wasting Time

When I read the description of Vimalakirti, it inspires me to imagine moving through my life without forgetting my deeper self. I want to be generous and kind. I want to be attentive, appreciative, and awake. I know the most sublime pleasure and peace come from what is unconditional, so I don’t want to fall into the trance of grasping after things in search of the next happiness fix. I want to be fully engaged in the world because that’s where suffering beings are, but I aspire not to be greedy, reactive, or defensive. I want to appreciate each and every moment – as Dogen described, “sages and wise ones in olden times valued each moment, each day, and each month more than their own eyeballs or the nation’s land.” [viii]

When I get carried away by self-absorption, habit energy, laziness, and anger, I am wasting time. When I forget my deeper self, I am wasting time.

I think all of us know when we’re wasting time. Our “wasting time” may not look like someone else’s wasting time. We may engage in an activity in a way that makes it not a waste, but then the next day do the same activity in a way that makes it wasting time. Even when engaged in actions which appear productive or generous, we may be wasting time. At other times we may be doing something ostensibly useless or silly, but it is actually a very good use of our time.

What characterizes a waste of time for you?

You probably have your own way to describe it, but if you’re anything like me, you feel like you are wasting time when you’re caught up in grasping or aversion. It’s like an object of longing pulls us off-center, or an object of aversion pushes us off-center. In either case we become preoccupied or obsessed. We can’t pay full attention to what’s right in front of us. We get distracted from our practice and may lose momentum.

At a subtler level, it also probably feels like wasting time when your mind and heart are divided – when you aren’t fully experiencing, attending to, or appreciating this moment because part of your mind is busy with worry, fantasy, anticipation, or anger.

When we’re wasting time, we’re not practicing. I define practice (in the most general, formless sense) as “living deliberately,” and you can’t live deliberately when you aren’t paying attention to what’s happening right here, right now.

How to Not Waste Time

Fortunately, to stop wasting time we don’t have to literally renounce our lives. There is a way in which such renunciation supports practice, but what’s most important is the state of our body, mind, and heart at any given moment.

In Continuous Practice, Dogen describes not wasting time as containing “the passage of days and months within your skin bag without leaking.” I take this to mean we should aspire to remain as centered as possible in our direct experience, in this body-mind, in the here-and-now. We “leak” when our attention, time, energy, or desire are pulled into the future, the past, or somewhere else. It’s not that there’s something inherently sinful or wrong about leaking, it’s just a waste of our life energy when it happens too much, or when we are at the mercy of such habits of mind.

If we aim to waste less time, it’s not helpful to compare ourselves to Vimalakirti, or the Buddha , or any other ideal, and beat ourselves up for not remaining aloof from the floating world of name and gain at all times. That’s one extreme. The other extreme is giving ourselves a pass – giving up, ignoring the still, small voice inside us that says, “Hey, you’re wasting time!” Allowing ourselves to be pulled around by desire and pushed around by aversion.

The Middle Way of Buddhism is the dynamic path that avoids either extreme. What does that look like? I suggest the Middle Way when it comes to not wasting time is this: Whatever we are doing, let us choose to do it. This brings our body, mind, and heart back into alignment with right here, right now. It stops the leaking. It allows us to pay fuller attention to the beings and situations we are encountering. If we find ourselves relitigating old arguments, scrolling endlessly through social media, complaining, or overthinking things, let us relitigate old arguments, consume social media, complain, or overthink things wholeheartedly! Ironically, when you do this – when you bring full awareness and energy to what you are doing – negative behaviors will often correct themselves, or your compulsion to enact them will decrease.

You know when you are wasting time, I know when I am wasting time. Nothing is more tragic than wasting our life, no?

To close with a few more words from Dogen ’s essay “Continuous Practice:”

Love and respect your body, mind, and self that are engaged in this continuous practice. [ix]

[i] Dogen , Zen Master. Treasury of the True Dharma Eye: Zen Master Dogen ’s Shobo Genzo . Shambhala. Kindle Edition. Appendix 1: Recommending Zazen to All People.

[ii] “Chiggala Sutta : The Hole” (SN 56.48), translated from the Pali by Thanissaro Bhikkhu . Access to Insight (BCBS Edition), 1 July 2010, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn56/sn56.048.than.html .

[iii] Dogen , Zen Master. Treasury of the True Dharma Eye: Zen Master Dogen ’s Shobo Genzo . Shambhala. Kindle Edition. Chapter 31A: Continuous Practice, Part One.

[iv] Ibid (page 545)

[v] Ibid (page 545)

[vii] Thurman, Robert A.F. (Translator) The Holy Teaching of Vimalakirti: A Mahayana Scripture . State College, PA: Penn State University Press, 2003.

[viii] Dogen , Zen Master. Treasury of the True Dharma Eye: Zen Master Dogen ’s Shobo Genzo . Shambhala. Kindle Edition. Chapter 31A: Continuous Practice, Part One.

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ESSAY time should not be wasted

Three meaningful ways of helping people to stop wasting time. " A stitch on time saves nine " … that is exactly what a popular saying states, and it has nothing to do with fabric, designing clothes or so. Actually, the message this old proverb wants to convey is: that it is a way better to spend some more minutes, energy and effort when completing a task, rather than spending even more time working on it later. Nowadays, is so common to listen how everybody complains about time. People claim they do not have enough free-time, neither for themselves nor for their families, relatives and friends. Even though, keeping track on time is a difficult task, this paper shows 3 significant pieces of advice, which might be really helpful in order to avoid time wasting. The first one consists in learning how to identify priorities. Second on the list is the importance of organization and the last of these three, avoiding procrastination. First of all, is necessary to understand what a priority is. According to the definition in the dictionary, a priority is an arrangement based on the order, not only of importance, but also urgency of a specific event. Sometimes, identifying the priority may result a little bit difficult. At the beginning, it might take some time to locate tasks and events in the correct place. But, once the habit of detecting priorities is developed, is easier to take advantage of the time. This can be achieved by means of making a list or a plan; in which, for instance, are placed the tasks required for a specific period of time. It can be daily or weekly. Moreover, is essential not to skip the order and stick to the plan that has been done. Otherwise, the results might be not the ones expected. This step leads us to the idea that prioritizing goes hand in hand with organizing. This is, precisely, the second advice to be discovered. Developing organization skills is such an art that very few people master. That does not mean it is impossible to achieve. These skills may help people to save time as well as reducing levels of stress. Organizing is certainly something that, similarly with other skills, comes with the practice until it becomes into a habit. Being well organized is not the same as being obsessed with the time. For example, when organizing, people become more productive at work. Since they have identified their priorities, they are focused on what they want to achieve. In that way, they start saving time and as a result, time is being managed more effectively and efficiently. Besides that, To-do lists, schedules and project planning might be definitely useful. Obviously, when you save time you reduce both time working and levels of stress. Some people assure they work better under pressure. The statement is valid. But, according to some studies, it does not work the same for everybody. Indeed, what happens is that when working under high levels of stress, workers constantly feel on edge. Said in other words, if the levels of stress are so high, the effectiveness when doing the task decreases. Based on this fact, in order to stay away from stress and take advantage of time, there is a third piece of advice to be taken into account. The third point is summarized in a single word: procrastination. Indeed, all human beings tend to procrastinate things up to some degree. It means putting off things that should be done in the moment, losing focus on them and doing instead something else that is apparently more enjoyable. The most common example for this case could be the scene in which the professor assigns homework with considerable anticipation to the class and the majority of students are completing the assignment the night before handing it in. Procrastination affects people deeply since it impedes them accomplishing what they are supposed to achieve. It is easy to see that in this story procrastination is the enemy of time. For that reason, is important to know how to avoid procrastinating things and making good and effective time management. The two first tips developed before, identifying priorities and organizing, could be definitely useful to kill

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Quote Investigator®

Tracing Quotations

Time You Enjoy Wasting Is Not Wasted Time

John Lennon? Bertrand Russell? Laurence J. Peter? Marthe Troly-Curtin?

Dear Quote Investigator : I like to enjoy life and sometimes I am criticized for spending too much time on amusements and diversions. My favorite response is attributed to the legendary free-spirit John Lennon:

Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.

An acquaintance told me recently that the saying is actually from the brilliant philosopher and logician Bertrand Russell. It is clear that you enjoy tracing quotations, so could you please look into this one? I am certain you will not be wasting your time.

Quote Investigator: In addition to John Lennon and Bertrand Russell, the saying has been attributed to T. S. Elliot, Soren Kierkegaard, Laurence J. Peter, and others. The attribution to Russell was a mistake that was caused by the misreading of an entry in a quotation book compiled by Peter. The details of this error are given further below in this post.

The first instance of the phrase located by QI was published in 1912, a year that occurred before Laurence J. Peter and John Lennon were born. The expression appeared in the book “Phrynette Married” by Marthe Troly-Curtin. This novel was part of a series by Troly-Curtin that began with “Phrynette” in 1911. The image to the left is the frontispiece of this earlier novel. [1] 1911, Phrynette‎ by Marthe Troly-Curtin, J.B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia and London. (Google Books full view) link An advertisement in Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine grandly proclaimed that “Phrynette” was “The Most Talked-About Book in London Today” in July 1911. [2] July 1911, Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine, Section: Lippincott’s Magazine Advertiser: [Advertisement for Phrynette by Marthe Troly-Curtin], Page not numbered, J. B. Lippincott Company, … Continue reading

In the following excerpt from “Phrynette Married” [3] 1912, Phrynette Married by Marthe Troly-Curtin, Quote Page 256, Published by The Macmillan Company of Canada, Toronto, Canada. (Note that a flaw is present in the digital image of the microfilm image … Continue reading a character is reproved for wasting the time and energy of others: [4] 1912, Phrynette Married by Marthe Troly-Curtin, Quote Page 256, Grant Richards Ltd, London; Riverside Press, Edinburgh. (Google Books snippet view) (Thanks to Eric at the Stanford University … Continue reading

“… Your father, for instance, don’t you think he would have done three times as much work if it had not been for your—what shall I say—‘bringing up’?” “He liked it—time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.” “Oh, but it was in his case—wasted for him and for many lovers of art.”

Here are additional selected citations in chronological order.

In December 1912 the saying was printed together with a small set of unrelated aphorisms in a newspaper in Ashburton, New Zealand. The wording exactly matched the phrase in “Phrynette Married”, and the phrase may have been copied from that volume. Alternatively, the statement may already have been in circulation. No attribution was given: [5] 1912 December 18, Ashburton Guardian, Thoughts for the Day, Page 6, Column 1, Region: Canterbury, Ashburton, New Zealand. (Google News Archive; Papers Past)

THOUGHTS FOR THE DAY. Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.

In 1920 a close variant of the saying was published widely, e.g., in newspapers in Trenton, New Jersey, [6] 1920 October 27, Trenton Evening Times, Daily Magazine Page for Everybody, Words of Wise Men, Page 21 (NA Page 6), Column 1, Trenton, New Jersey. (NewspaperArchive) San Antonio, Texas, [7] 1920 October 27, San Antonio Evening News, Words of Wise Men, Page 4, Column 2, San Antonio, Texas. (NewspaperArchive) Seattle, Washington, [8] 1920 November 12, Seattle Daily Times, Page 11, Column 8, Seattle, Washington. (GenealogyBank) and Salt Lake City, Utah. In each case the phrase appeared without attribution. The Salt Lake Telegram newspaper published the variant together with several other phrases that the editors deemed humorous. Here are three sample sayings: [9] 1920 June 29, Salt Lake Telegram, Just Joking: This Week’s Wisdom, Page 4, Column 6, Salt Lake City, Utah. (GenealogyBank)

When ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to confess. Time you enjoy wasting isn’t always wasted time. Man may have his will, but woman will have her way.

In 1924 a newspaper in Kingston, Jamaica printed a column about love affairs, “a subject which never grows old”, written by Rilette who offered makeup tips and encouragement along with her love advice: [10] 1924 February 26, The (Daily) Gleaner, Rilette Writes Again to Her Dear Friend Eve, Page 11 (NA Page 29), Column 1, Kingston, Jamaica. (NewspaperArchive)

Be sure you enjoy yourself wherever you are, even if others consider you are wasting your time; remember that time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time!—‘Bye,’ bye. Your friend, “RILETTE”

In 1927 a theosophical magazine credited an individual named Meredith with employing a curious version of the maxim. This name might be a reference to the noted Victorian novelist and poet George Meredith but QI has not found definitive evidence to disambiguate the moniker: [11] 1927 July, The Theosophical Path magazine, Vol. XXXIII, No. 1, On Looking Up Words in the Dictionary, Emmett Small, Jr., An Address delivered at the William Quan Judge Theosophical Club Meeting, May … Continue reading

Which brings to mind Meredith’s words: “Time enjoyed wasted, is not wasted time.”

In 1932 Bertrand Russell wrote an essay titled “In Praise of Idleness” in which he said that the work-hours per week should be dramatically reduced. This essay does not contain the adage. The following excerpt is included simply to suggest why Russell was a plausible candidate for coiner of the saying: [12] 2004, In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays‎ by Bertrand Russell, Page 6, Routledge Classics, London. [First Published in 1935 by George All & Unwin Ltd, London] (Google Books preview) link

The war showed conclusively that, by the scientific organisation of production, it is possible to keep modern populations in fair comfort on a small part of the working capacity of the modern world. If, at the end of the war, the scientific organization, which had been created in order to liberate men for fighting and munition work, had been preserved, and the hours of work had been cut down to four, all would have been well. Instead of that the old chaos was restored, those whose work was demanded were made to work long hours, and the rest were left to starve as unemployed.

Being idle would give one plenty of time to “waste”. But QI has located no direct evidence that Russell ever used the maxim. Indeed, the words were attributed to him primarily because of a mistake that involved Laurence J. Peter .

Peter is best known for his 1969 book, “ The Peter Principle “, about management and hierarchies. Several sardonic phrases emerged from his treatise, e.g., “In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.” Peter also compiled a collection of quotations called “Peter’s Quotations: Ideas for Our Time”. Unfortunately, the format used for some of the entries in the book was prone to misreading. Here is the confusing entry for a Bertrand Russell quotation: [13] 1977, “Peter’s Quotations: Ideas for Our Time” by Laurence J. Peter, Page 299, William Morrow and Company, New York. (Verified on paper)

The thing that I should wish to obtain from money would be leisure with security.     —Bertrand Russell (The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.)

The parenthetical comment after the name Bertrand Russell was not written by Russell. It was written by Laurence J. Peter. This helps to explain why the saying under investigation is sometimes attributed to Russell and sometimes to Peter. The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations uncovered this problem and mentioned it in a valuable section about misquotations. [14] Oxford Dictionary of Quotations edited by Elizabeth Knowles, Misquotations, Oxford University Press. (Accessed Oxford Reference Online in May 2010)

By 2000 the adage was being credited to the famous musician John Lennon who died in 1980. An ascription was printed in an astrology column in an Australian magazine: [15] 2000 October 14, Australian Magazine, The (Australia), Mystic Medusa – Travel Issue, [Horiscope information], Section: Magazine, Page 062, Nationwide News Pty Limited, Australia. (Access World News … Continue reading

As Libran John Lennon noted, “Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted.”

In conclusion, QI suggests crediting Marthe Troly-Curtin with this adage, provisionally. She is the author of the earliest currently known instance of the phrase. It is possible that someone used it before her and future research may uncover earlier examples. Laurence J. Peter also used the expression but he did so many years after its initial dissemination.

Thanks to Peter Gordon who helpfully pointed out some small errors in character selection.

Update History: On February 7, 2012 this article was reordered to improve readability and emphasize the 1912 citation. On November 3, 2012 the citation for December 18, 1912 was added. Also, the footnote style was changed to numerical. On December 3, 2013 a link and bibliographic entry were added for the copy of “Phrynette Married” that is available through the Internet Archive. On August 13, 2016 “Word of Wise Men” was changed to “Words of Wise Men” thanks to copyeditor Rebecca. Fixed some small errors in character selection on January 27, 2021.

7 replies on “Time You Enjoy Wasting Is Not Wasted Time”

Just need to work up the courage to say this to my tutor’s face.

Excellent research, thanks! I’ve been wrongly attributing it to Bertrand Russell for years.

I wanted to see if it was really from… Mark Twain ! (sooo many things uncorectly attributed to him…)

I didn’t know this website before, and I am really impressed by the quality of the informations, many thanks 🙂

The time I wasted reading the entire post was time I enjoyed wasting Thanks for wasting my time. 😉

thanks for wasting my time.. i enjoyed it….:)

Well….finding this website was not a waste of time, and enjoyable…thank you 🙂

the best reason to wasting my time ..thanks 😉

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Essay on Time

Time – how important is it.

The value of time is one of the most positive aspects of all-round self-development. Every day, our teachers, parents and grandparents remind us about the value of time. My grandmother often tells me that time is more valuable than money. However, each person has their way of utilizing the time. While successful people use them wisely, a lazy person might waste a lot of time. This can make him miss out some great opportunities in life. And once the time goes away, you cannot bring it back by any means.

Time and Tide Waits for None

Everyone needs to realize how important time is. Often, we waste a lot of time doing unnecessary activities or thinking about unnecessary things. This takes away a lot of hours from our everyday life. If we keep on losing our time, we are likely to face many hardships in the future. So, instead of attending to several things together, it is essential to focus on what is necessary. 

Our teachers always ask us to think about the most important things that we need to attend every day. We can avoid many problems in the future if we take care of them on time. There is a famous proverb, "a stitch in time saves nine". It also conveys the importance of taking timely action.

Punctuality and Time Utilization

Punctuality means always being on time. In our school, the report card always mentions whether we have been punctual during the session. Even when my parents leave for the office, they depart early. They are very particular about reaching their offices on time. As they say, staying punctual shows that we are true to our commitment and that we can manage our time properly. This is something that everyone appreciates.

Reaching on time, as well as not wasting time, would make other people believe in us. They can rely on that we will not be late to keep an appointment.

Utilizing Our 24 Hours

Managing the 24 hours in a day can be more difficult than we think. It takes some time and planning to make the most of the time available to us. The better we make plans for time management, the easier our everyday tasks become. We can start by listing our priorities, allowing separate time to do our worksheets, and setting realistic goals.

For proper use of time, we can decide on our long and short term goals. My parents have always encouraged me to make a list of things that I think is necessary, as well as a list of things that might wait for some time. Accordingly, they help me to create my priority list. Also, keeping my goals in mind helps me to stay active. I always know what are the things that I should end doing by the end of the day. So I don't feel comfortable unless I have done everything on my to-do list. It helps me to do all my tasks on time. So I always end up having some extra hours for refreshment.

Prioritizing Our Works

Not all works of our everyday life are equally important. For example, while some entertainment and outdoor sports might be important for mental refreshment, I can always reserve some time for them on the weekends or the holidays. During the weekdays, my priority always remains on preparing my lessons and doing other activities on the allotted time. Managing our everyday routine is a very fruitful way to prioritize. And once we manage to do it smoothly, we can recognize the significance of several jobs and tasks that we are supposed to do.

Lack of Time Management

Discipline is a very important part of everyone's development. Having a clumsy and unplanned everyday schedule can be a discredit on our part. This can simply show our inability to organise our tasks. Improper time management can lead to failure in different tasks that we do. It can also prove our laziness or inability to take proper steps.

FAQs on Time Essay

Q1. Name Some Basic Ways to Value Time.

Ans: The different ways to value time are:

Know what tasks are important to you. Finish your own work first before helping others.

Follow a well-planned and disciplined approach to every time-bound task given to us.

Go by the examples of famous and successful people. All of them respect whatever time they get. They do not let a single minute go by idly. Also, they always remain active during their working hours. They never allow any distraction during this time.

Q2. How can Goals and Work Lists Assist Us?

Ans: Keeping a to-do list is always helpful because it makes us more productive. It can help to outline our day to day activities. Also, having a list helps to set our priorities.

Q3. How to Prepare an Effective to-Do List?

Ans: We can always ask our parents and elders to help. However, we can start our own by observing how many hours we spend in schools, as well as intuition classes and while travelling. Also, we can make a list of things that we do every day. Next pick the things that are most important for the day to day works, as well as that of things that are not absolutely important. A responsible adult can help us get started.

Daydreaming: Not a Useless Waste of Time

Why wandering minds are often the most creative..

Posted March 24, 2016

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As a child, daydreaming was one of my favorite activities. Or should I say, non-activities? I spent hours alone in my room with random thoughts wandering through my mind. I loved to think about patterns, people, and the mysteries of how things were connected. My parents believed I was doing homework. And because I did well enough in school, they had no reason to think otherwise.

Looking back, I remember feeling embarrassed about my daydreaming. After all, isn’t daydreaming a useless waste of time? At least, that’s how I understood daydreaming as a child. It’s why I made excuses to be in solitude. That way, no one would make fun of me. No one would know that I wasn’t accomplishing a thing. Or so I thought.

Today, I look at daydreaming differently. I recognize how the process of mind-wandering is a critical aspect of creativity , our ability to produce and communicate original ideas. Like all things human, creativity is not simple or easily understood. In fact, creativity is full of contradiction, complexity, and perplexing mystery.

In their book Wired to Create: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind , Scott Barry Kaufman and Carolyn Gregoire dig into the science of creativity in a new and exciting way. They convincingly argue that this “messy” ability we call creativity is integral to our everyday lives. Our brains are not only wired to be creative, but our creativity is connected to all aspects of our lives­—to our thriving.

I couldn’t agree more.

The Advantages of Daydreaming

Let’s face it. Most of us are daydreamers.

According to a study by Harvard psychologists Daniel Gilbert and Matthew A. Killingsworth, we daydream forty-seven percent of our waking hours. That’s right. Forty-seven percent!

Whenever we are the least bit bored, our minds naturally wander. What happens in those hours of daydreaming? We explore associations. We make connections. We search for possibilities.

Kaufman and Gregoire devote an entire chapter of their book to the topic of daydreaming. In fact, they present good scientific evidence that both daydreaming and using solitude for reflection are among the attributes of highly creative people.

In an excerpt from their book, Kaufman and Gregoire point out the many benefits of daydreaming:

Creative thinkers know, despite what their parents and teachers might have told them, that daydreaming is hardly a waste of time. But unfortunately, many students learn to suppress their natural instincts to dream and imagine— instead, they’re taught to fit into a standardized mold and to learn by the book, in a way that may not feel natural and that very well may suppress their innate desire to create. But as two prominent psychologists recently noted, “Not all minds who wander are lost”— in fact, the mind’s wandering is vital to imagination and creative thought*. Nearly fifty years ago, psychologist Jerome L. Singer established that daydreaming is a normal and indeed widespread aspect of human experience. He found that many people are “happy daydreamers” who enjoy their inner imagery and fantasy*. According to Singer, these daydreamers “simply value and enjoy their private experiences, are willing to risk wasting a certain amount of time on them, but also can apparently use them for effective planning and for self-amusement during periods of monotonous task activity or boredom .” Singer coined the term positive-constructive daydreaming to describe this type of mind wandering , which he distinguished from poor attention and anxious , obsessive fantasies *. By making these important distinctions, Singer was able to highlight the positive, adaptive role that daydreaming can play in our daily lives, under the right circumstances*. From the beginning of his research, he found evidence that daydreaming, imagination, and fantasy are related to creativity, storytelling, and even the ability to delay gratification*. Of course, mind wandering can be costly when it comes at the wrong time, especially in regard to things like reading comprehension, sustained attention, memory , and academic performance*. The inability to control your attention when the task at hand requires it often leads to frustration, just as the tendency to get wrapped up in distracting negative thoughts can lead to unhappiness. But when we consider the fact that most of our important life goals lie far into the future, it’s easier to see how daydreaming might be beneficial. When our inner monologues are directed toward and measured against goals, aspirations, and dreams that are personally meaningful, the benefits of daydreaming become much more clear*. Over the past decade, scientists have employed newer methodologies to investigate these potential benefits. In a review of the latest science of daydreaming, Scott and colleague Rebecca McMillan noted that mind wandering offers very personal rewards, including creative incubation, self-awareness, future-planning, reflection on the meaning of one’s experiences, and even compassion*.

Like all human abilities, it’s important to understand both sides of daydreaming—the positives and negatives. Many parents worry about children who daydream excessively. And indeed, daydreaming can cause developmental challenges. In 2002, Eli Somer introduced the term maladaptive daydreaming to describe how mind-wandering can interfere with academic, physical, and interpersonal functioning. When daydreaming inhibits healthy development, affects sleep habits, or increases negative behaviors, parents should seek professional advice.

For the majority of children (and adults) daydreaming is not only a good thing, it’s essential to our flourishing as human beings.

Now, go do some daydreaming!

Kaufman, S. B. & Gregoire, C. (2015). Wired to create: Unraveling the mysteries of the creative mind. New York, NY: Perigee.

Killingsworth, M. A., & Gilbert, D. T. (2010). A wandering mind is an unhappy mind. Science, 330 (6006), 932.

Somer, Eli. (2002). Maladaptive daydreaming: A qualitative inquiry. Journal of Contemporary Psychotherapy . 32:2-3, 197-212.

Excerpted with permission from Wired to Create: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind by Scott Barry Kaufman and Carolyn Gregoire. © 2015 by Scott Barry Kaufman and Carolyn Gregoire. A Perigee Book, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC. (*See book for noted references.)

Marilyn Price-Mitchell, PhD, is the author of Tomorrow’s Change Makers: Reclaiming the Power of Citizenship for a New Generation . A developmental psychologist and researcher, she works at the intersection of positive youth development and education .

Follow Marilyn's work at Roots of Action , Twitter , or Facebook . You can also subscribe to receive email notifications of Marilyn’s articles.

©2016 Marilyn Price-Mitchell. All rights reserved. Please see reprint guidelines for Marilyn’s articles.

Marilyn Price-Mitchell, Ph.D., is an Institute for Social Innovation Fellow at Fielding Graduate University and author of Tomorrow’s Change Makers.

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How Do We Quantify the Elusive Concept of Wasted Time?

Byron reese and scott hoffman on our endless fascination with the way we spend our days.

We are obsessed with time. The folks over at the Oxford English Dictionary say that the word “time” is the most commonly used noun in the English language, with the word “year” third, while “day” and “week” both make a showing in the top 20.

Our fascination with time reflects how much we value it, and by extension how we want to avoid wasting it. And we’ve worried about this for quite a while. Four centuries ago, in William Shakespeare’s Richard II , the eponymous monarch utters the line “I wasted time and now doth time waste me.”

But even Shakespeare was late arriving on the wasted-time bandwagon. Two millennia ago Seneca penned, “It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing.” They didn’t call him Buzzkill Seneca for nothing.

One of the great equalizing facts of life is that everyone on the planet has exactly 24 hours in a day. Although we all individually choose to spend that time differently, let’s look at how we collectively use those hours and try to sort through how much of that time may be wasted.

A logical place to start is with sleep, the activity that takes more of our time than any other. The average person sleeps, or tries to sleep, about nine hours a day. Over an 80-year life, sleeping nine hours out of every 24 means we’re asleep for a total of 30 years. Is sleep wasted time? Only to the extent it is avoidable and is not considered pleasurable. If sleep is necessary for survival or if a person finds it pleasurable, it’s not waste. While the pleasure value of sleep varies, scientists still don’t understand physiologically why sleep is required for human life—but it evidently is. You can go longer without food than without sleep. The effects of modest sleep deprivation, such as staying up for 24 hours, mar your cognitive ability as much as being intoxicated.

Many sleep scientists believe you cannot train your body to need less sleep, and that doing so merely builds up a sleep deficit that manifests in poorer performance, which must be paid back at some point. Some argue that there’s a more efficient way to sleep than in one block, and that our recent ancestors, just a few centuries ago, spent fewer net hours sleeping by alternating shorter periods of sleep and wakefulness—a practice known as bimodal sleeping.

If humans can go without sleeping, the world’s militaries would like to know how. An article in the New York Times , for instance, points out that bristle-thighed curlews routinely fly as much as 6,000 miles without a stop as they travel from Alaska to the Marshall Islands. Assuming an average speed of 20 mph, that’s more than 13 days without sleep.

DARPA, the research and development arm of the US Defense Department, is studying birds to see if soldiers can consistently do the same. Not the flying part, obviously, but the staying awake part. Figuring out a way to juice soldiers is hardly new; the Third Reich’s devastating blitzkrieg invasion of France was powered by amphetamines that kept their soldiers awake for days and extended how long they could march at a time. But amping up armies with stimulants goes back way before even the last century. Cocaine was widely used in armies during World War I, and other drugs have been given to soldiers at least as far back as ancient Greece.

Our fascination with time reflects how much we value it, and by extension how we want to avoid wasting it.

There exist tantalizing accounts of humans who allegedly needed no sleep at all. Al Herpin, who entered into eternal sleep in 1947 at age 94, claims to have spent the later decades of his life getting absolutely no sleep at all. Or consider Paul Kern, a Hungarian soldier who took a bullet to the head in World War I and is said to have never been able to sleep again in the subsequent 40 years despite the use of hypnosis, sleeping pills, and alcohol. Other stories along these lines seem to have been widely believed and reported in their time but are seriously doubted by scientists today.

In modern times, the longest verified amount of time a human has gone without sleep took place in 1964 at Stanford University, under scientifically rigorous conditions, when teenager Randy Gardner spent 11 consecutive days awake. During that time, in which he was being closely monitored for signs of microsleep that might have escaped his notice, he maintained reasonably normal function, albeit with some clear evidence of cognitive decline. Afterward he slept for 14 hours, then ten the following night, and was then back on track, evidently none the worse for wear. Well, maybe that’s not quite the way to say it. He went on to suffer from debilitating insomnia, which he describes as “karmic payback” for his teenage stunt.

Certain diseases can interfere with sleep—in some cases, fatally. In an illness out of a horror novel, those who contract fatal insomnia see their brains invaded by prions, misfolded proteins believed to be able to transmit maladies. For the first four months of the disease, the unlucky patients suffer insomnia that leads to panic attacks and paranoia. For the next five months, they suffer from hallucinations. Eventually a complete inability to sleep leads to rapid weight loss, dementia, and eventually death. The whole process usually takes about 18 months.

Although hardly as severe as in the case of fatal insomnia, accumulated sleep deficits take their toll on us all. Fatigue due to diminished sleep is considered a contributor to the cause of any number of disasters, from the Exxon Valdez to Chernobyl.

How, then, do we spend the other 15 hours left in our day? Of the approximately 700,000 hours each of us is allotted in our lifetime, we will each spend an average of 90,000 of them working in an occupation. That may sound like a lot (and depending on the job you have, it might feel like even more). But, doing the math, you’ll find that it only works out to a lifetime average of three hours a day. Remember, of course, to subtract out your youth and retirement years, weekends, vacations, and for some, those days when your boss isn’t watching closely.

On average, people work eight hours a day, 225 days a year, for 50 years. By a conventional Western definition, it would seem that these hours are more or less the opposite of waste. If someone is paying you to do something, regardless of how mundane, irrelevant, or boring it might be at the moment, it must be worth something to them, and it creates work for you—so we can’t classify any job where someone is paying you with their own money as waste.

What are we doing when we aren’t sleeping or working? In the United States, the second-largest use of our time is actually… television. According to Nielsen, as recently as 2018 we spent four hours a day watching it. That’s broadcast television in real time, the same way the Pilgrims used to watch it. We’re not talking time-shifting DVR or YouTube, just plain TV. And given that nearly a quarter of that time is commercials, that’s an hour a day being told you have bad breath or are balding or that your car isn’t quite adequate. Multiply the numbers out over a lifetime, and you’re likely to spend well over two years of your life just watching commercials. That doesn’t count all the other ads you come across, all the radio and billboards and internet ads. Is that two years of life wasted time? Maybe not. If you value the shows you are watching, well, they have to be paid for, and that’s what you are doing by watching those ads.

TV isn’t even a majority of the media we consume. According to the same Nielsen study we spend 11 hours a day consuming media, which includes reading, listening, and watching. There’s overlap here with the work time we discussed earlier. You may be watching a video at work, which would result in the double counting.

By a conventional Western definition, it would seem that these hours are more or less the opposite of waste.

Of those 11 hours, we spend three on our smartphones. This particular part is a new phenomenon, and it accounts for our rising consumption of media. Our behavior here has been heavily modified over the last decade. Now many of us can’t step into an elevator without whipping out a phone to check email. How else are we going to spend the eternity it takes to get to the seventh floor? But again, we can’t categorically count any of this as wasted time.

What about time spent in the car? On average, drivers in the United States spend about an hour a day and drive an average of 30 miles. Over the course of your life, the amount of time you will spend waiting for red lights to turn green is measured in months. Is all of that wasted time? Conceptually, yes. After all, you’d ideally want to be able to step into a Star Trek -like transporter and just appear where you want to go, right? But transporters don’t exist, and we are willing to spend the time to get wherever we are going. So we can’t practically regard this time spent as waste until there is a better alternative.

What about time stuck in traffic? According to a study of commuters by the Texas A&M Transportation Institute, in 2014 “congestion caused urban Americans to travel an extra 6.9 billion hours and purchase an extra 3.1 billion gallons of fuel for a congestion cost of $160 billion.” The same report notes that in order to be on time for an important freeway trip, on average drivers left half an hour earlier than they would have otherwise, to account for traffic. Is this time wasted? In the strict sense of the word, yes. But it’s waste we choose. We could build more roads, mandate mass transit, cap the size of cities, and require carpooling, but we collectively choose not to. Evidently, we would rather wait in traffic than do these things.

Then there’s… everything else. The average person spends an hour a day eating and another hour a day doing chores. Over a lifetime, each of those amounts to a couple of years of your life. Add in another year of your life sitting on the toilet.

We’re dealing in pretty round numbers here, but if you’re keeping score you will have noticed that all this activity, from sleep to work to media and all the rest, adds up to more than 24 hours a day. How can this be? It happens because we multitask, so things get double-counted. You may watch reality TV while in the bathroom or listen to music while doing the ironing. If you’re a real overachiever, you can take a nap at work while a video is playing on your computer and score a three-fer.

So far, we haven’t identified any ways to eliminate wasted time. Yes, you could theoretically take a helicopter someplace to avoid traffic. But for most people that solution is impractical. If you’re making a voluntary choice, based on what’s important to you, on how to use your time, it’s hard for someone else to conclude it is a waste.

By extension, a person who spends all their free time playing video games and drinking beer isn’t wasting their life. Presumably they’re doing exactly what they want with their time. And further, going out and getting a better job would actually be a waste of time from that person’s perspective, since they would be spending that time doing something they didn’t really want to do. They’d rather be at home slacking.

An old joke about a fisherman and a banker has the banker on vacation in a small coastal village criticizing the fisherman’s lack of initiative, as the fisherman works only a few hours a day to make just enough to feed his family. The banker explains that by borrowing money and working longer hours for 20 or 30 years, the fisherman would be able to retire. “Retire?” asks the fisherman. “What would I do if I retired?” And the banker responds, “Well, I plan to move to a small coastal village and fish for a few hours a day.”

As a common adage goes, “the time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.” Henry Ford, however, would not have concurred. He offered, “It has been my observation that most people get ahead during the time that others waste.”

Michelangelo might have agreed with Ford. It’s said that after his death a note was found written in the aged man’s hand for his apprentice that simply said, “Draw Antonio, draw! Draw and do not waste time.”

If any of this makes you feel bad, consider that the animal kingdom is full of time-wasting slackers, too. By one estimate, in a given ant colony, three percent of the ants are workaholics and never stop, about a third seem to do absolutely no work at all, and the rest work some and slack some. These percentages may not be all that different from a human colony. Ants also have behaviors that sure look wasteful. They stack their dead in intricate ways, or bury them in specific spots, only to later rearrange them or dig them up and move them.

If slackers who enjoy doing nothing aren’t wasting time, can time actually be wasted? Can we shift down the continuum toward zero waste with respect to time? Absolutely. Let’s consider a few specifics.

There’s time you spend looking for something you lost. This may not sound like much, but consider how often you misplace your keys, your smartphone, the remote control, and your umbrella. But don’t stop there. What about missing computer files, or that website you visited last month that you need to find again? Or that video you saw online? You know, the one with the guy wearing the blue shirt? How do you find that? How about a lost passport? W-2 form? Birth certificate? What about the combination to a lock? Lost passwords? Finding all of these just puts you back to where you were. And as Ben Franklin quipped, that lost time “is never found again.”

Just how much time is wasted looking for stuff? This phenomenon hasn’t been well studied, but if you misplace something every day and take five minutes to find it, then 100 days of your life would be spent looking for stuff you’ve lost.

In a similar vein, that sinking feeling you get when you forget to save a file and have to redo a bunch of work clearly could have been avoided. We waste time when we get lost, to be sure. And waiting in lines, such as at the DMV, feels like wasted time as well.

Being sick could count as wasted time if what you got was avoidable. Eventually, it’s highly likely that technology will allow all sicknesses to be prevented or cured. But in the meantime, the colds and other illnesses you get feel like a waste.

What about ways to prolong your life, to add additional time? One candidate could be to take up a physical activity like jogging. Some older research suggested that you could increase your life span by three years by regularly jogging. But if you do the math, you would be spending those three years, well, jogging. Is that worth it? You decide.

Newer research suggests you can get a much better return on your jogging misery. An hour of jogging a week, spread out over four days, works out to about six months of jogging over an adult life, and could add perhaps six years to your life span. Biking seems to yield a similar return. A high-stress life, on the other hand, takes away about that much time. Being happy is perhaps the best medicine of all.

But the easiest way to eliminate wasting time is through technology. We don’t walk up the hill to haul water from the well anymore; we turn on the tap. Imagine household chores before electricity: washing clothes before washing machines, heating a home with wood, et cetera.

While labor-saving devices at work haven’t lessened the number of hours people on average put in at the office, time recouped with labor-saving devices at home has been pocketed, so to speak, and we now have it for leisure. That’s why we can consume media 11 hours a day.

Now, if someone can simply invent the transporter…

__________________________________

Excerpted from Wasted: How We Squander Time, Money, and Natural Resources-and What We Can Do About It . Used with the permission of the publisher, Currency, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York. Copyright © 2021 by Duneroller Publishing, LLC. All rights reserved.

Byron Reese and Scott Hoffman

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More From Forbes

5 simple time management strategies to stop wasting time.

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It's not the hours you work, but what you do during that time.

Are you constantly struggling to keep up with your to-do list? Does it feel like time slips away faster than you can manage? Don't fret. In this article, we'll unveil five proven strategies to help you reclaim control of your time and boost productivity. Whether you're overwhelmed with tasks or seeking to streamline your efficiency, implementing these methods could be the game-changer you've been searching for. Discover how you can revolutionize your approach to time management and achieve peak productivity.

Implement the Pomodoro Technique:

The Pomodoro Technique is favored for enhancing focus and productivity. This method involves breaking work into intervals, typically 25 minutes in duration, followed by short breaks. By working in concentrated bursts and then allowing brief periods of rest, you can maintain high levels of concentration and avoid burnout. It is importance to set a timer, such as one on your phone, to track each Pomodoro session, ensuring adherence to the structured workflow. To maximize this technique, for your 25 minute work sprint, shut off all notifications on your computer and phone and give yourself the gift of 25 uninterrupted minutes. For more on the Pomodoro Technique, read my previous article in Forbes .

Prioritize Tasks with the Eisenhower Matrix:

Not everything on your to-do list carries the same importance, weight or urgency. To determine task priorities, consider employing the Eisenhower Matrix . This four-quadrant tool categorizes tasks based on their urgency and importance, enabling you to allocate your time and resources effectively. Tasks are classified as either urgent and important (Do First), important but not urgent (Schedule), urgent but not important (Delegate), or neither urgent nor important (Eliminate). By utilizing this framework, you can focus your efforts on tasks that align with your overarching goals and minimize time spent on less consequential activities.

Time Blocking for Enhanced Focus:

Time blocking works to maximize productivity and minimize distractions. This technique involves allocating specific blocks of time to dedicated tasks or activities, thereby establishing a structured schedule. You can avoid multitasking and maintain concentration on the task at hand by designating focused time periods for different responsibilities. It is important to set boundaries during time blocks to minimize interruptions and ensure uninterrupted workflow.

Leverage Technology Wisely:

In today's digital age, technology can be both a boon and a distraction and knowing how to leverage technology wisely to enhance your time management efforts is paramount. This includes utilizing productivity apps and tools such as task managers, calendar applications, and time-tracking software. By harnessing technology’s capabilities, you can streamline workflows, automate repetitive tasks, and gain valuable insights into your time utilization patterns. It is important to select tools that align with your preferences and workflows to maximize effectiveness.

Best High-Yield Savings Accounts Of 2024

Best 5% interest savings accounts of 2024, practice the two-minute rule:.

For quick and straightforward tasks that often get overlooked, consider the implementation of the Two-Minute Rule. This rule stipulates that if a task can be completed in two minutes or less, it should be done immediately rather than postponed or added to a to-do list. By addressing small tasks promptly, individuals can prevent them from accumulating and consuming valuable time and mental energy. There is great significance in cultivating a habit of immediate action for tasks that fall within the two-minute threshold, thereby maintaining momentum and efficiency throughout the day.

By implementing techniques such as the Pomodoro Technique, Eisenhower Matrix, time blocking, strategic technology usage, and the Two-Minute Rule, you can enhance your focus, prioritize effectively, and make the most of your available time.

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Wasting Time on the Internet? Not Really

By Quentin Hardy

• Aug. 5, 2016

Two years ago, Kenneth Goldsmith, the University of Pennsylvania poet and conceptual artist, taught a creative writing course he called “Wasting Time on the Internet.” Students would do just that, probing the tedium of the internet. But thanks to in-class use of social media, the class also became a creative ferment of improvised dance, trust experiments and inquiries into the modern nature of the self and the crowd.

The constant experimentation changed Mr. Goldsmith into a self-described “radical optimist” about the internet, too. While many of his peers worry about the effects that endless tweets and bad videos have on our minds and souls, he sees a positive new culture being built. The first poet laureate of the Museum of Modern Art, appointed in 2013, he believes we are headed into a creative renaissance, one with unprecedented speed and inclusion.

Meanwhile, the class has evolved into a seminar on collective “time wasting” that Mr. Goldsmith has held in several countries, and it returns to Penn this fall. His new book, named after the course, will be available this month.

Why write this book?

I had cognitive dissonance. Theorists say the internet is making us dumber, but something magical happened when my students wasted time together. They became more creative with each other. They say we’re less social; I think people on the web are being social all the time. They say we’re not reading; I think we’re reading all the time, just online.

I’m an artist, and artists feel things, we distrust these studies. As a poet I wanted to observe, I wanted to feel things.

You compare online experiences with 20th-century philosophies and artistic movements.

The DNA of the web is embedded in 20th-century movements like Surrealism, where artists sought to live in a state like dreaming, or Pop Art, where they leveraged popular culture to make bigger points about society. Postmodernism is about sampling things and remixing them, and that is made real in this digital world.

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Math by the Mountain

Teaching secondary mathematics in the pacific northwest, 6 things you can do to stop wasting your own time in the classroom.

If you’re looking to regain some of your essential time, this is a post for you!  Many of the daily systems teachers have setup for themselves and students can quickly turn into time-sucks.  Now, I’m not talking about the ever-important relationship building part of teaching, but the nitty-gritty paper passing out, finding absent work, and making seating charts side of things.   I’ve found a few ways to streamline my routines and classroom practices so that I can stop wasting my own time by being inefficient.  Here’s my tips for you:

1.  Post your “Office Hours” for the Week

2.  Streamline the Seating Chart Process

Over the summer I got the idea to put numbers on my desks.  I didn’t really know what I was going to do with it at first, but it has become one of my best ways for saving time making seating charts!

To make things quick and easy (and obviously fair), I’ve come up with a popsicle stick system.  The desks up front are reserved for students with poor vision and IEPs/504s.  The rest of the desks are for anyone else.

On a new seating chart day I’ll stand outside my classroom door and catch students as they walk into class.  They’ll draw a stick out of the appropriate container, and I can write down their names on the seating chart.  For my biggest classes (~35-37), this is completely done within 1 minute of the bell ringing.

On the majority of days that I’m not making a new seating chart, I just stack them and keep it in a cabinet.

3.  Don’t Waste Class Time Passing out Papers

Have a dedicated paper pick-up area in your room–preferably, near the door.  My students are trained to pick up whatever is on the counter on their way in.  I leave papers for the day and any supplies they might need (scissors, glue sticks, highlighters) here.

4.  Let Class Start Itself

As students walk in, they are trained to pick up whatever is on the cabinet by the door and then read the instructions that are projected on the SmartBoard.  I have a PowerPoint file on my computer that I never close and have a color-coded slide for each period (Algebra 1 is green, Statistics is yellow, and Algebra 2 is purple).  This frees me up to do whatever I need to be doing as class is starting.  It also gives us a few more precious minutes each period. Here’s a picture of one of the recent slides for Algebra 1.

5.  Let Students Take Care of Their Absent/Missing Work

At the end of each class, I put any extra papers in the corresponding class-bin.  Each bin has tabs labeled 1-31, for each day of the month.  If an Algebra 2 student was gone on the 23rd of the month, when they get back they know to look in tab 23 of the Algebra 2 box to find any papers they need to make up.  Students are trained to ask a classmate for a picture of the notes they missed, and if they need extra help getting caught up they can stop by during my office hours for the week. This system practically runs itself.

6.  Immediately File Missing Assessments

This has been a HUGE game-changer that I’ve added this year.  In the past I have just piled up extra assessment papers and I was often left scrambling to sort through my disorganized pile of tests and quizzes to find an assessment a student wanted to make up from when they were absent two months ago.  Most of the time I was able to find the assessment, but sometimes that led to the pile of tests and quizzes falling all over the floor.  Sometimes I’d have to print a new one. It wasn’t efficient and I didn’t feel good about that system (it could be embarrassing at times when a student was waiting and I was empty-handed).

I also have a standing policy that any student can drop by during any period of the day to make up missing assessments.  I have many seniors that that have early release and are only at school for 4 or 5 periods of the day.  Instead of coming before or after school, it works best for them to just stay an extra period and take their quiz/test in the back of my class or out in our pod area (the side walls of my classroom are actually windows, so I can watch students easily). When students pop by to make up an assessment during another class, I needed a way to be able to find their test/quiz ASAP, and my old system was failing horribly in that regard.

These systems and practices take very little time of your own to set up, but yield great time-savings throughout the year.  I hope this gives you a few ideas to use in your own classroom!

If you would like to get my office hours poster, you can find it here .

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19 thoughts on “ 6 things you can do to stop wasting your own time in the classroom ”.

Awesome. I started labeling desks for easy seating arrangement this year as well and agree it is a huge time saver. I labelled them with the names of well known mathematicians which had the added bonus of students unprompted asking “What did Noether do?”

I like the idea of a bin for students who need to sit closer to the front.

Thanks for adding your modification to this great list. My students – four classes of fifth-grade writing – already have student numbers, so I’ll use your idea and put select names of Pulitzer Prize winners on each desk.

BDPaus, You could also use Newberry award winners with fifth graders!

Thank you for posting this!! It’s so nice to see things made by people who teach seniors. I actually spend the end of my day going through the day’s attendance and putting a name on each copy that absent kids missed, and then I put it in my pass-out bun for the next day (helps me with seeing who misses a lot and gives me time to email Home or to the counselors office) but I love your method of saving assessments for them, and I’m going to put those (in a folder) in the pass-out bins too! Thank you for all the great ideas!

I’ve seen the 1-31 numbered folders for missing work, but what do I do when the month changes? Do I start a new set of folders or do I empty the files for the next set/month. If a kiddo is absent on the 29th of the month, what happens if he shows up on the first? Where would he find the previous month assignments?

Let’s say it’s the 14th of the month. At the end of the period when I go to file the extra papers for the day, I’ll take out whatever was in the file from the 14th of the previous month and replace it with the papers from the current day. This allows all papers to be available for an entire month. Please let me know if that doesn’t make sense or if you have more questions!

• Pingback: 20 Things to Do Before the New School Year: BTS Checklist + GIVEAWAY – Math by the Mountain

One issue I think I’d run into with having the day’s papers ready for kids as they walk in is that they’d be too concerned with just doing those activities or assignments right when they grab them instead of engaging in my teaching and other class activities throughout the hour. How do you address this? Thanks!

If I have multiple things, I will sometimes only put one stack of papers or materials out at a time. When we’re ready for the next one, I’ll saw them out and then send up one representative from each table group or region of the class to grab enough for their area. I find this is still quicker than passing out myself and minimizes off-task student interactions.

I have a ton of absences everyday- so your “absent papers files” were life changing to me. I had been writing their names on their papers when they were absent. This saved me so much time everyday and put the responsibility on the kids. It also made it so if someone lost a paper, I’d just send them there instead of trying to find a leftover copy! Thanks!

I just came across this via Pinterest and am going to implement all of these systems. I teach 8th grade and 6th grade. While my systems are good, I think these will be even more efficient! Thank you so much for sharing!

I use a number system for my seating chart as well. On days I’m changing their seats, I write the number in expo on the desk, but they always get erased before the next class. What did you use to label each desk?

I printed a bunch of boxes on cardstock that each had a number in the middle, laminated them, and then put double sided scotch tape on the back. They do not come off. At the end of the year, I pick a lucky class where the students each get to scrape their number off. The desks have never been damaged and the students seem to enjoy it.

Make up work due to absences has always been problematic for me, in my otherwise, procedure-dominate classroom. Placing the extra work in folders by date is genius and keeping tests, etc to be made up labeled with the student’s name and “dead date,” as I call it, is a game-changer! Thank you so much for sharing!

Love your seating chart. Your desks are like mine and I like the number system. Anyway I can ge a link to the seating chart or direct me to where you found it?

Hello! I made it on Microsoft Publisher using the shape tools. I rotated them round until they fit together the way I wanted. I can send you mine if you’d like. It’s not the most user-friendly thing, but it works for me. Shoot me an email at [email protected] if you’re interested.

I have numbered my desks too for the past three years!! I use the numbers as their calculator and computer numbers too for my high school math classroom!! My desks are in groups of four and so it replicates a coordinate plane. When I say person #2 it is the person sitting at Quadrant II. Great for cooperative learning!! I love your other ideas too!!

Love this! I’m curious though, what’s the “notecard” assignment on your agenda slide?

Hi Bridget!

That’s for my Algebra support class. The day before we take a test I give them a practice test and they make a notecard on 3×5 index card I give them. Our class is two periods long, so roughly 90 minutes, so they typically turn it in by the end of the period but they can take it home if they want to work on it more. We cover a lot of soft skills in that class like study habits, so working on making a notecard for a test is something we do together and we talk strategy about what makes sense to go on a notecard.

I also keep all of their notecards after the test and give them back when we take the final. The final is sectioned off by unit so it’s super nice for them to have made all of the notecards as they went.

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