In Praise of Wasting Time

In Praise of Wasting Time PDF Author: Alan Lightman
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1501154370
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 106

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Book Description
In this timely and essential book that offers a fresh take on the qualms of modern day life, Professor Alan Lightman investigates the creativity born from allowing our minds to freely roam, without attempting to accomplish anything and without any assigned tasks. 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.

In Praise of Wasting Time

In Praise of Wasting Time PDF Author: Alan Lightman
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1501154370
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 106

Get Book Here

Book Description
In this timely and essential book that offers a fresh take on the qualms of modern day life, Professor Alan Lightman investigates the creativity born from allowing our minds to freely roam, without attempting to accomplish anything and without any assigned tasks. 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.

Wasting Time on the Internet

Wasting Time on the Internet PDF Author: Kenneth Goldsmith
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062416480
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 147

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Book Description
Using clear, readable prose, conceptual artist and poet Kenneth Goldsmith’s manifesto shows how our time on the internet is not really wasted but is quite productive and creative as he puts the experience in its proper theoretical and philosophical context. Kenneth Goldsmith wants you to rethink the internet. Many people feel guilty after spending hours watching cat videos or clicking link after link after link. But Goldsmith sees that “wasted” time differently. Unlike old media, the internet demands active engagement—and it’s actually making us more social, more creative, even more productive. When Goldsmith, a renowned conceptual artist and poet, introduced a class at the University of Pennsylvania called “Wasting Time on the Internet”, he nearly broke the internet. The New Yorker, the Atlantic, the Washington Post, Slate, Vice, Time, CNN, the Telegraph, and many more, ran articles expressing their shock, dismay, and, ultimately, their curiosity. Goldsmith’s ideas struck a nerve, because they are brilliantly subversive—and endlessly shareable. In Wasting Time on the Internet, Goldsmith expands upon his provocative insights, contending that our digital lives are remaking human experience. When we’re “wasting time,” we’re actually creating a culture of collaboration. We’re reading and writing more—and quite differently. And we’re turning concepts of authority and authenticity upside-down. The internet puts us in a state between deep focus and subconscious flow, a state that Goldsmith argues is ideal for creativity. Where that creativity takes us will be one of the stories of the twenty-first century. Wide-ranging, counterintuitive, engrossing, unpredictable—like the internet itself—Wasting Time on the Internet is the manifesto you didn’t know you needed.

Solving the Procrastination Puzzle

Solving the Procrastination Puzzle PDF Author: Timothy A. Pychyl
Publisher: TarcherPerigee
ISBN: 0399168125
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 130

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Book Description
"Previously published as The Procrastinator's Digest in Canada by Howling Pines Publishers in 2010."

Time Management Ninja

Time Management Ninja PDF Author: Craig Jarrow
Publisher: Mango Media Inc.
ISBN: 1633538923
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 150

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Book Description
“This book will help you own your calendar, block time for what matters most and reclaim your life.” —Paula Rizzo, author of Listful Living: A List-Making Journey to a Less Stressed You You want more time to spend with family, to achieve big goals, and to simply enjoy life. Yet, there seem to be more and more things competing for your time, and more distractions interrupting your day. Craig Jarrow has spent many years testing time management tactics, tools, and systems and written hundreds of articles on productivity, goals, and organization, Through it all he’s learned a simple truth: Time management should be easy, not complicated and unwieldy. And it shouldn’t take up more of your precious time than it gives back! Time Management Ninja offers 21 rules that will show you an easier and more effective way to take control of your time and manage your busy life. Follow these simple principles and get more done with less effort. It’s no-stress, uncomplicated time management that works. “Read this book, apply its rules, and you’ll find freedom.” —Hyrum Smith, bestselling author of Purposeful Retirement

Wasting Time with God

Wasting Time with God PDF Author: Klaus Issler
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
ISBN: 0830822801
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
asting Time with God Klaus Issler considers seven character traits and companion disciplines to develop in light of God's friendship with us in order to help us make more room in our lives for him.

The Temporalities of Waste

The Temporalities of Waste PDF Author: Fiona Allon
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000209113
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 423

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Book Description
This book investigates the complex and unpredictable temporalities of waste. Reflecting on waste in the context of sustainability, materiality, social practices, subjectivity and environmental challenges, the book covers a wide range of settings, from the municipal garbage crisis in Beirut, to food rescue campaigns in Hong Kong and the toxic by-products of computer chip production in Silicon Valley. Waste is one of the most pressing issues of the day, central to environmental challenges and the development of healthier and more sustainable futures. The emergence of the new field of discard studies, in addition to expanding research across other disciplines within the social sciences, is testament to the centrality of waste as a crucial social, material and cultural problem and to the need for multi- and transdisciplinary approaches like those provided in this volume. This edited collection seeks to develop a framework that understands the material properties of different kinds of waste, not as fixed, stable or singular but asdynamic, relational and often invisible. It brings together new and cutting-edge research on the temporalities of waste by a diverse range of international authors. Collectively, this research presents a persuasive argument about the need to give more credence to the capacities of waste to provoke us in materially and temporally complex ways, especially those substances that complicate our understandings of life as bounded duration. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of the environmental humanities, cultural studies, anthropology and human geography.

The Art of the Wasted Day

The Art of the Wasted Day PDF Author: Patricia Hampl
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0698407490
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
“A sharp and unconventional book — a swirl of memoir, travelogue and biography of some of history's champion day-dreamers.” —Maureen Corrigan, "Fresh Air" A spirited inquiry into the lost value of leisure and daydream The Art of the Wasted Day is a picaresque travelogue of leisure written from a lifelong enchantment with solitude. Patricia Hampl visits the homes of historic exemplars of ease who made repose a goal, even an art form. She begins with two celebrated eighteenth-century Irish ladies who ran off to live a life of "retirement" in rural Wales. Her search then leads to Moravia to consider the monk-geneticist, Gregor Mendel, and finally to Bordeaux for Michel Montaigne--the hero of this book--who retreated from court life to sit in his chateau tower and write about whatever passed through his mind, thus inventing the personal essay. Hampl's own life winds through these pilgrimages, from childhood days lazing under a neighbor's beechnut tree, to a fascination with monastic life, and then to love--and the loss of that love which forms this book's silver thread of inquiry. Finally, a remembered journey down the Mississippi near home in an old cabin cruiser with her husband turns out, after all her international quests, to be the great adventure of her life. The real job of being human, Hampl finds, is getting lost in thought, something only leisure can provide. The Art of the Wasted Day is a compelling celebration of the purpose and appeal of letting go.

Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine

Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine PDF Author: Alan P. Lightman
Publisher: Pantheon
ISBN: 1101871865
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
In this meditation on religion and science, Lightman explores the tension between our yearning for permanence and certainty, and the modern scientific discoveries that demonstrate the impermanent and uncertain nature of the world. As a physicist, he has always held a scientific view of the world. But one summer evening, while looking at the stars from a small boat at sea he was overcome by the sensation that he was merging with a grand and eternal unity, a hint of something absolute and immaterial. This is his exploration of these seemingly contradictory impulses, and the journey along the different paths of religion and science that become part of his quest. -- adapted from publisher info.

Wasting Time Constructively

Wasting Time Constructively PDF Author: Peter J Solomon
Publisher: Pink House, LLC
ISBN: 9780578206998
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 498

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Book Description
Memoirs can tell all or tell nothing. And while some memoirs recite successes, honest memoirs often chronicle setbacks, frustrations, and failures. For Peter J. Solomon, documenting his successes as well as his failures was a way to show us how a perseverance to achieve is paramount in life, and that family, friends, health, a sense of humor, and luck are powerful allies. Peter J. Solomon's Wasting Time Constructively is much more than a memoir. It is a fascinating collection of stories about his life complete with insightful business tips, riveting accounts of bygone eras, a constant willingness to learn, and candid descriptions of failures as well as successes. Solomon not only shares memories about his business career and his political involvement; he also details a uniquely engaging journey built on his family's roots, his passions, and his quest for a balanced life. Wasting Time Constructively is told with vivid and compelling prose, creating an emotional bond between the reader and Peter.

Always Postpone Meetings with Time-Wasting Morons

Always Postpone Meetings with Time-Wasting Morons PDF Author: Scott Adams
Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing
ISBN: 9780836217582
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 116

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Book Description
From mountain and valley, from hill and dale, people are asking, "How can I have more Dilbert in my life?" Help is at hand with a blast from the past in Scott Adams' very first compilation of Dilbert comic strips, Always Postpone Meetings with Time-Wasting Morons. It is tempting to compare Adams' work to that of Leonardo da Vinci. The differences are striking. Adams displays good jokes and strong character development, whereas da Vinci has been skating for years on his ability to do shading. Advantage: Adams. And though it may seem boorish to point this out, da Vinci wrote backwards. And he's dead. Advantage: Adams. The choice is clear. Fans looking for a book which will stand the test of time, even beyond the time you spend flipping through it in the bookstore (for which the author receives no royalties whatsoever), should buy this book. Those who are not good comparison shoppers can buy the Mona Lisa.