Doing Nothing

Is doing nothing a good use of your time?

I’m a pretty busy person. I cram a lot in my schedule, and have a lot of responsibilities and goals. But I always find myself doing nothing at times when you could argue that I, in fact, should be doing something. So this begs the question; do I necessarily find this a bad thing?

Here’s my daily schedule; my mom wakes me up at 6:50, and I climb out of bed, throw on some clothes, and stumble downstairs by 7:10. Some days, I leave the house by 7:30 and make it to school on time. On other days, I don’t. I often find myself in 1st hour brushing my teeth instead of sitting in Physics. I have Nonfiction Writing 2nd hour, and a study hall 3rd. I spend 3rd hour practicing piano in the attic. That’s a positive for me; being productive when I could be on my laptop. I have class until my 5th hour free period, and since the attic is busy, I’m usually in the library. It’s a perfect time for me to do homework and study. I would say that I’m productive about 5% of the time. I feel kind of bad about it, but I’ve come to accept it and tell myself that it’s important to give myself time to relax. So I leave at as it is, hesitantly call it a good nothing, and move on. Classes for the rest of the day, except for Uni periods. The attic is full again, so it’s a perfect time to be doing homework. Maybe my productivity levels during Uni Period is bumped up to 15%. It’s a shorter period, and sometimes I do my history homework. It’s a little harder to tell myself I’m being responsible when I waste away both 5th hour and Uni Period. That’s a lot of time, that I could be productive in. I try not to think about that too much.

Once my school day ends, I go to the tennis center, piano lessons, or home. At home, I usually eat a quick snack, and from there I am faced with a diverging point. I could either go take a “quick break”, and have that slip away into doing nothing until dinner, or I could start practicing piano or doing other work. Sometimes I’m productive before dinner; other times, not at all. I always practice piano after dinner until bed, so I feel pretty good about that.

So that’s how my day goes. Whenever I don’t have commitments such as class or tennis practice, I am faced with the decision of whether or not to be productive. In my mind, as I struggle to get ahold of how I manage my time, I mainly strive for a compromise; I’ll let myself relax and breathe during my free time at school, with my friends around and options limited, in return for not wasting my time at home. I don’t always keep this up, but when I do, I feel pretty good about myself. Generally, it’s enough, and I’ve never been that person to try to fit everything into every moment of my day, to obsess over what I could be getting done.

In a perfect world, I’d be able to perfectly balance my work with my play. I’d have short, refreshing breaks effectively dispersed throughout my day. Unfortunately, it never really works when I tell myself I’ll just take a 15 minute break. That’s something I’ve learned about myself and am aware of. Thankfully, it’s easy for me to work once I’ve started. I guess what I’m saying is that I don’t have problems when it comes to taking healthy breaks. I just need to be careful of how I define healthy.