lifestyle

Worlds worst phrases - Killing Time

I can think of very few common phrases that are more destructive than “Killing Time”.  Why would we ever want to kill time? 

When I was growing up I loved an Australian band called “Killing Time” and I think that one of the reasons was that I found the name strangely exciting.  The concept of wasting a precious resource, seemed tough and independent.  It had that sense of “Who cares” in a Punk, rebellious sort of way.  Those days are gone.  The band changed their name and subsequently disappeared from my thoughts and now the words Killing Time just seem so pathetic.

Killing Time is something that we might do when we are waiting in an airport lounge, or in a doctors waiting room.  We know we will be there for some time and we hate the boredom that we think might meet us during the wait.  So we set about finding a way to make the time go faster - to Kill the Time.  While this is understandable, it certainly isn’t productive and when we look more closely, we are cheating ourselves of a valuable opportunity.

We all realize that there are a limited number of hours in what we call a lifetime.  Our days as we know them will sometime come to an end.  This makes us realise that there is no time to spare, no time that we can afford to Kill.  We should make sure  that every minute of our lives is spent living.  Every opportunity, deliberately doing what we believe is important.  This will include working, studying, contemplating, relating, resting, planning, and plain old enjoying.  But as far as I can see Killing Time appears in none of these sort of categories.  The deliberate waste of time, attempting to speed up time is never a productive goal.   

The situations when we might be tempted to Kill Time are usually when we have minimal distractions or pressing jobs to do.  They are times when we have little to stimulate us or motivate us and really all we have to do is just sit out the minutes.  When we consider how rare opportunities like this are, we begin to see how important it is that we make the most of them.    In our, otherwise, frantic lives, we are usually short on time.  There often seems like not enough time to achieve what we want, so why would we even consider Killing Time when we have some to spare?  Why not put it to good use?

I like to regularly take my daughter to the park to play with the other kids.  When we are there and she is settled in with some friends, I am off the hook.  She doesn’t want to play with me, and I can make sure that she is safe from a distance.  Then I have time to spare.  I could either Kill the Time by counting blades of grass or watching the minute hand of my watch or I could use the time.  When I have an opportunity, I am training myself to use creative techniques to develop new article concepts.  I use the stimulus around me to bring up a problem that needs to be solved and then I design an article around solving that problem for my readers.   I work through some ideas and what I already know, then I think about what research I have still to do.  By the time my daughter is ready to go home I can have pretty well worked out where the article is heading and how to get it off the ground.  Rather than Killing time I use it and articles like this are the result.

How can you use this spare time without Killing It?

1. Always be prepared for spare time.  Carry with you (even if it is just in your head) something useful to do.  Either a book you are reading, a idea you are working on, some information you are trying to learn or even your phone so that you can use the time to strengthen or repair a relationship
2. Take the attitude that times like these are precious gold.  When you are stuck waiting somewhere, you are often cut off from obligations for a while and so you are free to pursue whatever you want.  Get out some paper or put your mind to work and make the most of the time because it will soon be over and you will be back into the real world. 
3. Treat yourself to an experience that you wouldn’t normally have time for.  Instead of just reading the same old industry magazines, why not use the time to read something totally unrelated and see where it takes you.  Profound insights often come as a result of learning something in a totally unfamiliar field.
4. Practice a skill.  Try out your networking skills by meeting a complete stranger and finding some way that you can help them.  Practice reading the language that you are studying or pen down some code for the computer language that is going rusty in your head.  Buy a puzzle book from the newsagent and work on some vigorous mental gymnastics.  Or if the time and place are right, try a deep stretching session or relaxation and meditation.
5. Produce something.  A small bite of free time like this is perfect for producing something compact or part of a larger something.  Perhaps your thing is poetry, maybe it is graphic design.  There may be time for you to refine a process in your life or develop a new goal.  Maybe what you need is to produce a solution to a problem or to find a hidden weakness in something.  You just might find that this opportunity is perfect for producing these things.
6. Set your mind to some creative or even meandering thinking.  An opportunity like this can become really useful if we are able to come out of it with a brand new idea or a new use for an old idea.  Even if the subject is relatively small, a revolutionary idea can lead to massive benefits.

I hope you agree that Killing Time is a terrible waste of a precious resource.  Rather than killing it, why don’t you deliberately use it.  Make the most of it and quickly you will see why Killing Time is a phrase that we should all scrub out of our vocabulary.

What are the classic times in your life that you feel like Killing?  How can you use them productively rather than Killing them?

Thanks

Tom