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We are all worried about wasting time. Especially in the West, we have created a frenzied lifestyle in which the twenty-four hours of each day are carved up, dissected, and reduced down to ten minute units of efficiency. We take our iPhones and laptops with us on vacation. We check email at restaurants or our brokerage accounts while walking in the park. When the school day ends, our children are overloaded with "extras." Our university curricula are so crammed our young people don't have time to reflect on the material they are supposed to be learning. Yet in the face of our time-driven existence, a great deal of evidence suggests there is great value in "wasting time," of letting the mind lie fallow for some periods, of letting minutes and even hours go by without scheduled activities or intended tasks.
Gustav Mahler routinely took three or four-hour walks after lunch, stopping to jot down ideas in his notebook. Carl Jung did his most creative thinking and writing when he visited his country house. In his 1949 autobiography, Albert Einstein described how his thinking involved letting his mind roam over many possibilities and making connections between concepts that were previously unconnected. With In Praise of Wasting Time, Professor Alan Lightman documents the rush and heave of the modern world, suggests the technological and cultural origins of our time-driven lives, and examines the many values of "wasting time"—for replenishing the mind, for creative thought, and for finding and solidifying the inner self. Break free from the idea that we must not waste a single second, and discover how sometimes the best thing to do is to do nothing at all.
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Creators
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Series
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Publisher
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Release date
May 15, 2018 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9781501154379
- File size: 23428 KB
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9781501154379
- File size: 23717 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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March 15, 2018
The distinguished physicist and novelist grapples with the pervasive network of digital distraction he calls "the Grid" and discusses how we can disengage while salvaging its benefits.Lightman (Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine, 2018, etc.) critiques the negative impact exerted not only by the internet, social media, and smartphones, among other elements of information overload, but the louder, faster, fragmented nature of our time-driven lifestyles. The effects on our young people are particularly worrisome, and it all happened so quickly. The author demonstrates how, for all its useful features, the wired world takes an enormous toll on our psyches. Where is the space for reflection, for processing, for simple downtime, for "free grazing of the imagination" amid all this relentless input? Without that space, writes Lightman, we risk damaging our inner selves. He argues for the need to allow "our minds to wander and roam without particular purpose," stressing the importance of creativity and detailing all that we risk losing by failing to recognize the threat. Perhaps as much as anything, he writes, it is the irony of increasing isolation in a hyperconnected world that should concern us. He frankly admits to being a "user" himself, seduced by some of the same electronic entreaties that afflict the ranks of the addicted. This call to disconnect from a hyperactive, overly structured existence, at least for a mental breather, is not new nor unique to Lightman. But few present their arguments so cogently or more persuasively present the advantages of cultivating a contemplative habit of mind. A sober, companionable writer, the author rarely exaggerates, and his argument rings true: To unplug (now and then) is to prosper.Lightman, who lives less than a mile from Walden Pond, takes a page from Thoreau, convincingly arguing that we must embrace play, solitude, and contemplation to leaven our hyperstimulated lives.COPYRIGHT(2018) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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