Why We Don’t Know What to Do With Our Time

It’s an interesting paradox. We say we don’t have enough time most of the time. But if we are given an infinite amount of time, do we always know what we’d do with that time? If we need a break from ‌burnout, we’d for sure relish some time, but then what? Most of the time we are trying to fill our time by staying busy. It could be for work or play. Something that keeps us occupied doing something. Often what we do is externally outsourced, meaning we want some external agency to tell us what to do. Because we really don’t know what to do with our time. So let’s dive into why we don’t know what to do with our time in more detail. 

“Thus we play the fool with the time and the spirits of the wise sit in the clouds and mock us.”

~ William Shakespeare

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Do We Think What We Would Do if We Had Infinite Time

Now, this is a hypothetical question. What I mean is, if we had the luxury of time, then what would we do with it? Most of our lives, we work for a living. Only with time when we become financially independent. We can ask this question.

It might sound like a straightforward question, but most people struggle when they have infinite time. Because in the busyness of life we often forget to reflect on this question. Only when we get into this phase do we initially go through the honeymoon period? But soon face this question.

When we choose to just be with ourselves then we confront our ‘monkey mind‘. It’s always trying to jump from thoughts to thoughts which might be either about future planning or brooding over something from the past. But it takes effort to to just be and reflect on doing what really makes us feel good. What energises us. Listen to our body, often our gut know its and the ‘monkey mind’ doesn’t.

Why We Don’t Think About What to Do with Infinite Time

This is an interesting hypothetical situation worth thinking about. Imagine you have infinite time. You could probably make and save enough to reach a point when you don’t need to work for money anymore. Then what would you do with your time? Now, to make it even more exciting, you can have infinite time and never die, then? Would focus all your time on compounding your wealth or leave that to the markets and the economy to do that for you?

We don’t even want to think about this situation because reality drives us to keep on running on the treadmill because we want to keep on spending more and more. And always think we might not have enough, even if we don’t realise that we might not spend all that we have already accumulated. Think you are yearning for an ice cream. Once we have enough ‌ ice creams that yearning for more gradually wanes. That’s the reason the consumerist economy keeps on innovating new ways to generate instantaneous dopamine and through myriad entertaining ways to spend. We always think we will not have enough, so we make more and want more; even an infinite time will not be enough.

Why We Don’t Know What to Do With Our Time

So because we don’t even want to think what we’d do if we had infinite time often the case is that we don’t know what to do with our time. Therefore let’s try to understand a bit more about why we don’t know what to do with our time.

Want External Agency to Direct Us Stay Busy

The first one is mostly the case for most of us. We want an external agency to direct us to stay busy. It could be work to earn a living. Then, when we don’t need to work for money anymore, we get bored and then don’t know what to do with our time. Many times we run back to work again just because we need the structure. Because we cannot define and create that structure for ourselves. We have depended on an external agency for most of our working lives to give us that structure that we don’t know how to be independent anymore. It is often easy to follow a structure provided to us versus creating one of us. It just needs more work on our part to do that for us. 

Avoid Facing Ourselves

The second one is that we avoid facing ourselves. Now, what do I mean by facing ourselves? Don’t we do that every day in front of the mirror? Most of the time we want to run away from ourselves. We want to stay busy doing something so that we don’t have to ask existential questions.

Questions about what we really want to do in our lives. If financial needs are taken care of, what do we want to do with our time? Often we say that time is the greatest wealth since it is non-renewable and we can’t make more of it. We are all going to die. So the time left for us before we die is only decreasing day by day. If we really believe time is precious and we can’t get back what we have already lost, then why do we still don’t know what to do with our time?

Facing ourselves is tough; we need to spend time with ourselves, just with ourselves, with nothing else to keep us busy or entertain us. In today’s digital world, that is difficult. Only we are willing to and then actually spend time with ourselves reflecting and contemplating can we develop self-awareness. Often we need to meditate to quieten our ‘money mind’ because it loves to brood over the past and plan for the future. That is probably the hardest part.

Don’t Explore Our Calling

The third one is not exploring our calling. Now calling is difficult to even internalise. What do we really mean by a calling? It might mean different things to different people. But to me, it is doing something that makes me feel good from the soul. That for which I expect nothing in return. It gives me a sense of peace of mind and energizes me.

I am not sure if I have multiple callings, but writing is one of them. I started this blog back in 2019, and although intermittently, I have not quit writing on this blog altogether. Only time will tell, but I do continue exploring my calling. Often it takes, I think, experimenting, and so I think it is an iterative process. When I was young, as a school kid, I loved painting, especially landscapes. Today, as I think about it, I love nature and exploring vast landscapes. They energise me. I don’t know the relationship between writing and painting, but maybe there is one. Maybe just like landscapes, writing doesn’t have any bounds, like capturing our thoughts on an infinite canvas. 

Not Leave Our Comfort Zone

The fourth reason is that we don’t want to leave our comfort zone and explore something different. I worked in corporate jobs for 28 years and decided to move on to explore the other side of the coin. I believe we are the sum total of our experiences. How do we know there is no other experience that life offers us if we don’t want to jump out of our little pond? What is taking us out of our comfort zone and our sense of security? Because jumping out of our well could be scary, because we are jumping into the unknown. So when we don’t choose to take risks and stay in our well, we keep doing what we have been doing for decades. Since we don’t know what else to do with our time if we don’t do what we have been doing forever.

With this, we often forgo the opportunity of discovering the parts of ourselves that we have always pushed back into the shadows. Things that we don’t want to think about consciously, but we know deep down they exist in our subconscious. There is only so much we can do consciously to mute these whispers from the subconscious, and it’s only a matter of time when they get too loud. 

Trapped in the Illusions of Our Ego

The fifth one is abstract; we stay trapped in the illusions of our ego. What do I mean? We have these various layers of illusions about our identity, about who we are; it is the persona we have created about ourselves for others. But in the process of creating this persona for ourselves, we get trapped inside it because that is how we identify ourselves, not to mention how others identify us as well with it. That creates both self-imposed and external expectations from us.

So we keep on doing what we know to do with our time to satisfy these expectations of us. That also prevents us from asking who we really are or want to become without these expectations. These expectations become our illusions. We are scared to death to strip ourselves of these illusions lest we become naked. But think about it: when we are on our deathbeds, would we still want to stay trapped in our illusions or finally break free to become naked and face our true selves?

Conclusion On Why We Don’t Know What to Do With Our Time

So, to conclude, we are all busy running the business of life, but for the existential question of what we can do with our time if it were infinite, it is not an easy one. Often we want to just stay busy with something so that we don’t have to deal with this question. When our essential needs are taken care of, what we spend our time on points to what the purpose of our lives is. There is no defined purpose of life that is given to us as a script. It is ‌when our primary motives of ego, sex, money, and fame are stripped off. We define and find our meaning in our lives. And unless we find it, we would probably not know what to do with our time when we don’t need to stay busy anymore.