How to waste time for yourself 5mins a day

Fang Jin
3 min readMay 2, 2024
Photo by Kumpan Electric on Unsplash

For some reason I’d like to experience as college student once again. It’s not like I dream to be young, maybe. But I’m more like to go back to school and have fun, and especially to experience the moment that I had most of fun with, with myself I guess, to not know what I am doing, and to get lost in the time stream.

So I want to go back to college, so to spend time on things that interests me. Even though I had class to attend back then, I could stare at the window for nothing for long long time without anyone questioning me. Yes, that kinda of dumb state of mine. I felt that state is better than any vacation even. It’s not just only peaceful, it’s surreal.

So I’d like to have that kinda of state with me at least 5mins a day.

Allow me to waste time

The side effect of being a grown-up is that you suddenly have little time to waste. Literally you somehow are not allowed to waste time, you have work to do, you have kids to attend to, you have dreams to fulfill. But you suddenly have all time slots filled up after you wake up, you seems don’t have time to waste. That’s kinda of bad, if you ask me, because we are all dumb animals, we are entitled to waste time for no reason.

So find a place to practice it somehow.

A quiet place so that no one can see you first. And then start waste time, for example play or not even play anything, but just let time fly by or don’t worry about time, not a vacation, but you don’t care anyone’s expectation, just live the heck of living, waste the heck of time for nothing. You just allow it to happen, dumb and not responsible.

Learn things absolutely new

One easy way to waste time is to start something new, not even something that you want to learn, pick up something that pop up to you that you know you’ll never pick it up, like I don’t know, drawing, singing, dancing, whatever you literally have no idea about, but deep in your conscience you might have some idea long time ago. Back then you don’t have time to do it. Suddenly since you are allowed to waste time, why not pick it up, who’s heck going to judge me now?

Nobody.

The thing you pick up isn’t going to be easy or hard, no feelings. Why? Because you literally is wasting time without even know the clock. After a hour or two, you will be surprised it’s already dinner time. Now it’s time to find something to eat. Yeah, that is wasting time is about. Somehow you feel like you had the most fun out of learning that thing which you have no idea what you have learned.

Great experience! That is how kids learn stuff.

Conclusion

I guess I want to be college kids. Little pressure, and just dumb.

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Fang Jin

#OpenToWork Front-end Engineer, book author of “Designing React Hooks the Right Way” sold at Amazon.