Choice of time wasting activity

Depending on your goals in life, you will obviously have a different stance on this, but sometimes it pays to sit back and think about these things.

First of all, what are your goals in life?
- to leave the planet in better shape than you found it?
- to have as many endorphins as possible released in your brain during your life?
- to have a positive impact on others?

If there are other broad goals you live for, I'd be interested to know.


So with that in mind... how do you spend your time? For the sake of this monologue, I'll assume you work. So you work for money, then there's time spent preparing for work, then time spent doing basic life stuff like eating/sleeping/washing/etc. So that leaves maybe a few hours each day plus a couple of days a week to do whatever it is you choose to do with no binding commitments other than those you impose on yourself either directly or indirectly.

Looking at it from both an economical perspective and a human perspective:
1. what do you do with the money you have left over after all your standard life commitments?
2. what do you do with the time you have left over?

Both questions can be answered co-dependently when looking at the activities.


Personally, I like to be fit and healthy. Therefore a weekly ride is usually factored in... it's healthy, keeps my sleep patterns vaguely reasonable, gets me out of the house, gives me a social outlet in a leisure context and it's free.
I also like to play cricket, which has many of the above benefits but costs me about 1hr's pay per week to play. More of a social aspect than the cycling.
To be more social again, I often have dinner/movie/etc with friends. That's probably twice a week and costs maybe half a day's pay per week.
Then the rest of my time is spent either watching TV (getting up to date on what's going on in the world politically/scientifically/sportingly/etc) or online (playing online games, chatting with international friends, documenting my thoughts on philosophical topics).

I think it's quite a good balance between a working (focussed), sporting (active), relaxing (relaxing) life. However, with working full time, being active and resting my body & brain; I don't get much of a chance to work towards or reflect upon my overall goals... and I don't mean buying a house, settling down with a wife & kids... I mean the reasons why I may want that lifestyle... what will it give me as a person and is that reason (overall goal) what I actually want to work towards? Would I prefer to spend my time traveling to foreign countries getting my adventure fix? Would I prefer to spend all my money on charity so I can enjoy the feeling of giving others happiness? Do I want to plant my seed and raise a couple of jaded kids who will get a disproportionate dose of my analytical view of the world?


I think it's a great shame that people generally don't really enjoy their free time. Some don't know how to wind down, some feel guilty about not doing more with their spare time, some drink their spare time @ the pub. Similarly, some people are locked into thinking about money all the time instead of exploiting their good financial position to forget about money in their spare time and do whatever's going to make them happy.

It would seem what you do in your spare time defines who you are, as much as anything else in life does.

After all, the number of hours of free time in your life (particularly while you're healthy and able) are counting down every day. How do you choose to spend or "waste" them?