Efficient time use
In my story about Heidegger, Drugs and authenticity I told about the importance of quitting drugs and other things (porn, video games, chatter, etc.) that lead to living an inauthentic life.
Many people may ask now what they should do with their time now. The good thing is that philosophy has answers for that!
Nature: The first solution is from Heidegger himself. Spend time in nature. Walk into your local forest, walk across a lake or a river or spend time gardening. Listen to the singing of the birds, feel the mud under your feet while you walk, smell the fresh air, see the beauty of the sun reflecting in the water and touch the trees. It will help you to understand being and nothingness and it will also connect you to all other beings, which opposes the effects of inauthenticity and Seinsvergessenheit. It´s even scientific proven that time in nature is good for you:
- It lowers your heart rate, blood pressure and help you to relax your muscles
- It reduces stress and exhaustion.
- It improves your mood and your self-esteem
Philosophy:
Another answer was given by Seneca and Schopenhauer.
In “On the shortness of life”, a letter that Seneca has sent to his friend Paulinus, he talks about how many people always moan and complane about how little time they have and how short live is. Seneca disproves them by saying that they only use their time wrong. He also talks about how every moment could be the last and how we would use our time when we just think about it. So he uses the concepts of being and nothing even before Heidegger without calling them so. His solution is to use as many time as we can afford reading philosophy.
Schopenhauer also suggests to spend as much time with philosophy because it holds a mirror in front of us and let us see life without the illusions from the will to live (according to Schopenhauer the primary force that drives our life decisions, the will to reproduce)
Arts:
Along with Philosophy Schopenhauer suggest to spend as much time with art as possible. The reasons were the same as for philosophy. Music was one of the few things he truly admired.
In his famous seven fragments work “In search of the lost time” Proust examines how to use your time. While first trying to get famous and then trying to find the love of his life he comes to the conclusion that art is the most valuable resource to put your time in (Interestingly to notice is that “In search…” was semi-biographical and that Schopenhauer had the same journey behind him, trying first to get famous, then tried to get a successfull relationship. Both came to the same conclusion). For Proust the opposite of art was habit, the boring and dull daily routine we have. Children get easily excited about even the smallest things and Proust idea was to get some of this excitement back into adulthood. For Proust art was the medium that help adults to recover some of their excitement they had as a child.
Nietzsche was also a great admirer of art founding love of the music of Richard Wagner and the literature of as example Goethe.
Your Vision:
While we work on the vision we have, we work on our best possible version, which Nietzsche calls the superman. This is not only about doing things that directly influence our vision, but also about the things that indirectly influence our vision like learning or improving the skills which are needed for our vision.
