I Use My Time Inefficiently

I’m not promoting inefficiency be followed for all my time. But I think I am prone to try too many of life’s hacks to be more efficient to save time or make decisions easier.

Netflix tells me what movies I’d like. Other services tell me what books I’d like to read, while another service recommends what music I’d enjoy.

Sometimes I think it is vital for me to be inefficient, take a chance, and find or discover something I didn’t know might add joy to my life.

Recently I was roaming through the TV onscreen guide and saw a movie I had never heard of. As an aside, I watch a lot of movies. The title caught my interest as it didn’t reveal anything about the film. I could have looked in my IMDB app to see if I’d enjoy it. But fortunately, I just started to watch it, having missed only the first minute or so.

This movie will stick with me for years to come. I’m still asking myself about what part was genuine or not. Was it trickery in the same way a magician might fool me? Was it the camera angle that misled me? Was the audience all in on the show?

I was thoroughly engrossed for the 90 minutes or so. To quote the slogan of a TV channel, it was ‘Time Well Wasted.’ It was the best inefficient use of my time.

Oh, yes. The name of the film is ‘In & of Itself.’

As older adults, we have wisdom. Part of that wisdom is knowing we don’t know what we don’t know. To break through that fence of double ignorance, we need to take a chance

Not too long ago, my wife and I walked one of the local trails. Then we went to a coffee shop some distance away, chosen from a list of 30 independent coffee shops. While sitting on the patio, I spotted a curious sculpture across the street. There was a rough statue of a person looking up at a giant human head. It was resting on a large upright rectangle, with two large lower legs and feet. How peculiar!

We had to take a long way home to get a closer look.

Everything was as I saw it except for the rectangle. We had been looking side-on, and now we looked it straight on. From the patio, I thought the rectangle might be an information display for the University.

Instead, it was a large square opening. Nothing!

I couldn’t make sense of it until reflecting when I got home. I’ll need another visit. But for now, I think it was meant to represent an open book – an open mind of the young university students walking by it every day.

Please give this a bit of a think. Identify a place you wouldn’t usually visit as a tourist. It could be a town or city. What about a neighbourhood you never need to travel through? What about a route you usually drive through but never walk through?

Set aside time to waste and give it a different look.

I’m curious about your thoughts. Please leave your comment.

Wired Magazine inspired this topic.

And the Featured Image is a graphical representation of all my files related to writing my Blogs.

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