Wasted Time

​In our time-obsessed culture, is there anything worse than “wasting time?” Be efficient. Improve productivity. Make the best use of your resources. God forbid you ever get caught twiddling your thumbs or daydreaming. “Death to the time waster!”
 
My dad used to have this thing with finding the fastest route from our home to his office in Topeka, KS. It was a game for him to prove how his engineering instincts could find a quicker, better route. You can understand this from someone whose job it was to improve manufacturing processes on an annual basis to save money for the corporation he worked for.
 
It amused me riding in the car with him. “I found this new turn to the golf course and it’s 17 seconds faster than the old one,” he’d regale us with his discoveries. “Awesome, dad, glad to hear it.”
 
More fun for me was seeing different parts of Topeka. His efficiency tactics became my meandering daydreams. It was enjoyable discovering a blooming yellow rose garden in someone’s front yard or a hill that yielded a previously never-before-seen view of the Kansas River. In a very tiny way, he opened up new worlds.
 
During several job cutbacks I’ve experienced in my career, I found time to waste. Rather than seeking how to get from point A to point B as rapidly as possible, instead I wanted to loop around, see the sights, let my mind wander. It was a good way to decompress and not think about my jobless plight.
 
Sadly, that’s not the world we live in. Instead, we are pushed to move faster, solve problems instantaneously. Don’t take time off to get out of the daily onslaught.
 
This forces me to admit my way to destroy wasted time. Similar to my dad, I find myself almost instinctively gauging various routes I’m driving to select the one that avoids traffic, eliminates stop lights and keeps me away from accidents and crazy drivers. This leads away from the path of efficiency to a certain extent, so to “save time,” I have to explore other options, using further brain power tactical strategies.
 
My favorite to eliminate wasted time is to avoid semi-trailers at stop lights and on-ramps to highways. Sounds simple and easy, and it is both. The learning curve occurred based on experience: getting stuck behind semis as they slowly shifted and shifted and shifted to go from 5 to 10 to 15 mph. It takes them forever to get to highway speed. The same principle applied to stoplights.
 
So, in the interests of saving time to give you time to daydream, the tip of the day is to accelerate quickly around semis BEFORE they got onto the on-ramps. And, if you find yourself coming up to a stoplight behind a semi, take every option available to get on the left and pass it after the light turns green.
 
There, that should save you 49 seconds in your day, at least. Enough time to find some other leisurely route home while you hum to yourself, enjoy the scenery out the side window and sing to your favorite rock ‘n roll tune.