by Rob Purifoy

Created on: December 04, 2008   Last Updated: December 20, 2008

Time has been thrust upon us, what we do with it is our free will. Shall we choose to do good deeds, make ourselves millionaires or burn through it until we have none left? Whatever the choice, even going to and from work each day while sitting in traffic an hour each day is a waste, and a crime. That is an average of two hours daily completely lost, from family, productivity, stress and need I say, gas. And oh yes, let's not forget about the traffic cop waiting to clock you a few miles over the limit as you try to hurry to and fro.

Time wasting leads to stress, add that to the daily aggravations of life and it's a mixture that could lead to disappointment. You won't get a ticket for wasting time however, just a long list of things left undone and a host of annoyed people around you. It's okay in some respects, we all waste time in some regards from taking a smoke break to searching our next purchase on the internet and getting stuck on the website for longer than expected. We live in the world that forces us to super-task, forget multi-task. The doctors thought they had it tough with kids today as they prescribe Riddalin, some working adults today pose a whole new problem.

I hint at Adult ADHD because this can be a leading cause for lack of focus and thus time wasting. There are other causes of "wheel spinning" as I call it, meaning someone is always doing something, yet not much gets done. Wasting time can also be subjective in that a waste to one person may be productive to another. For example, right now my wife could think I'm wasting time writing because it's not productive in her world. But for me writing opens my mind and leads to creative thinking for other things throughout the day.

Aside from each persons definition of what is productive there are serious personal crimes of wasting time. One main time waster as I spoke of earlier is sitting in traffic, no one is working, being productive and worse even, wasting gas sitting on the highway. This is unavoidable for most but nevertheless is one of the biggest loss of time each day. With today's technology telecommuting may be a growing trend as well as the four day work week. These two things would save countless hours away from family and millions of gallons of gas. It's said that time is money, but it does not stop there, time is a precious commodity.

The extremists among us may live by the credo of "you can sleep when you're dead". This is fine for some as I myself used to think that way. At a younger age I didn't want to miss anything, be a part of everything and have as much fun as I could take in. Of course as life sets in as an adult life itself tends to get in the way. Still sleeping seems a waste, but it's necessary in order to be productive, strange how it works that way. As we get older and more emotionally mature we realize how valuable time becomes. But even so, we tend to let it run without thinking about it, sort of like our heart beat. Einstein was probably one of the only people that constantly thought about time, but in his case I don't think he wasted it by thinking about it.

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