by Alex Bond

Created on: June 24, 2008

Something that has been on my mind a great deal lately is the topic of free time and boredom. Many people have a dream of saving up enough money to eventually retire and have the rest of their life as free time. I'm under the impression that someone having unlimited amounts of free time will be challenged to make good use of all of it. One reason for this belief is how the people I know as well as myself currently spend our free time.

Many people in college use the website, facebook. This is a website for social interaction, even though it is through a computer. Although it does serve some purpose socially in meeting new people and attending social gatherings, the majority of its participants are using it to procrastinate on homework or to waste time. I used to use facebook more and I could sit there for hours looking through the 1000's of clubs just to see what there was. I didn't feel happy about how I spent my time afterwards. I knew I had wasted it, but it was addictive.
What can you do in your free time continually without getting bored? Watching television for more than 30 minutes gets boring. The longer I watch it the worse it gets. In fact watching it for more than 60 minutes leaves me with a feeling of having my energy drained. I've noticed a diminishing return for most activities people do to take up their free time. Watching TV is fun and entertaining for the first 30 minutes, but for each additional program that is watched the amount of enjoyment gathered from watching TV is less than before.

Another thing I notice people doing is overindulging in activities that are necessary. It is necessary to eat to survive. But, many times, people will eat not because they are hungry but because they are bored. Having a clean living space is necessary, but sometimes people will go about doing menial tasks like cleaning an already clean house. These things are not what human life was made for. Our bodies and minds are so extraordinary and that is easy to forget. We must not forget how much we can achieve, and we must take precautions to not let our energy get sapped by routine.

One of the few events that doesn't seem to leave me with a feeling of wasted time or boredom is learning. This can be divided into two categories: learning information (semantic memory) or learning skills and abilities (procedural memory). Practicing something all the time, such as playing a guitar, does not leave one feeling like they wasted their time. On the contrary, most people find

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