5 Reasons to Stop Killing Time
Making the most of every minute
Imagine you have been sentenced to prison for five years. You can fantasize on your own time about the crime you committed to get there, but think about what you would do with those five years. Many prisoners spend those years working out, watching TV, playing endless games of cards. Would any of these keep you happy for five years? Would you sleep away your sentence? Are you killing time in any of these ways now?
Killing time is a common term we use for engaging in meaningless activities so time will pass quickly. This is often when we are bored or waiting for something to happen. But killing time should be something we dread and avoid as much as we would avoid killing a loved one. Here are five reasons why.
1. We don’t get very much time.
If you knew the exact number of breaths your body could take in your lifetime, you certainly wouldn’t waste any of them. You might never want to try smoking, and you might even move to a place where each of those breaths could be as sweet and clean as possible.
While you might not know the exact number of breaths you’re going to take, you do know it is a finite number. You also have a finite number of hours, minutes, and seconds. Why not make each of them as sweet as possible by filling them with meaningful things, activities that stretch your creative abilities, conversations that open your mind to new ideas.
2. You are not a spectator.
We kill time in waiting rooms, on long, dull Saturdays, or during down time at work. These days, that often means scrolling through social media, leveling up on a game app, or even complaining about how boring life is. But those minutes are part of your life too. They can be a valuable part of your story.
There is too much to do to be killing time. Whether it is the chores around the house, the crime in your neighborhood, or the hunger in the world, you have a role to play in making the world a better place. Though it may seem more pleasant to distract yourself from it, the actions you take during these times, no matter how small, might be the catalyst that brings enormous change in your own life and the lives of others.
3. Waste leads to regret.
How often have you wished you had time to write a novel, start a business, or come up with a solution to some frustration in your life? Those minutes you kill are exactly the time you could be spending on those projects. Even if it’s only a minute to jot down a few ideas, read a paragraph from an inspiring book, or just sit silently and think, really think about something important, you are one step closer to reaching your goals.
William James said, “Killing time is not murder; it’s suicide.” How many nights have you tossed on your bed thinking about all the things you should have done that day? You might then honestly assess how much of the day’s time you killed and resolve to make better use of tomorrow’s limited hours and minutes.
4. You have a choice.
Even though we trade much of our time for money (aka working a job to pay the bills), we do have a choice about how to spend our time. Author and strategist Robert Greene says we have dead time — time we kill — and alive time. We kill time when we spend it passively, waiting for something to happen. But you could instead spend that time with your mind alive, learning, planning, moving yourself forward.
It’s your choice whether your time will be alive or dead, whether you will move toward your goals or stagnate where you are. Even if you feel as if someone else dictates your every waking minute, you can usually find a moment you have killed here or there in your day. You can make those moments work for you.
5. Time is a gift.
Perhaps the most compelling reason not to kill time is because it is a gift from God, the very first gift: “In the beginning….” God created time before anything else existed, marked it by the movement of the earth around the sun and the changing of the seasons, and bookended time with birth and death before we move on to eternity. These moments of your life God knew before time began. And time is the precious gift he gives us to learn what he has to teach us and put it into practice.
St. Alphonsus Liguori wrote tomes about how to strive for perfection. In his life-changing book Preparation for Death, he admonished that at the end of our lives, we will gladly give our entire fortunes for one hour of the time we have wasted, one more hour to do good or to make amends for our wrongdoings.
Rest is different from killing time
Of course, I don’t mean to imply in any way that we should not rest or sleep or relax. Certainly everyone needs to chill once in a while. But those moments when you feel bored, when you determine there is nothing better to do than kill time, those are the moments that are ripe for self-improvement, for self-examination. Understanding what time is and how little of it we each have should compel us to make the most of every precious minute.
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