Obsessing about free time and maximizing its use.

Post Reply New Topic

I'm wondering if anyone can relate to this. Anything that occurs in my life tends to go through a check on whether or not it is worth my time. I perceive anything and everything as an invasion of my free time. I believe that I value my free time a lot higher than the average person, thus a lot of things tend to get filtered out. I'll go into more detail.

Food. I eat very simple food that requires little to no time invested in it. The top contenders are usually something like Cereal (out of a cup), a sandwich, frozen pizza, and bags of chips. All because they require no invested time. I've never spent any substantial amount of time (over 5 minutes) preparing a meal. I don't even appreciate it when it's done for me. I always eat things that are easy. Similarly, if I am pursuing one of my narrow interests heavily I often go without eating anything for long periods of time (24 hours or so).

Shopping. I'll know I need to buy something, but I never will. If the store is not "on the way" there is pretty much absolutely no chance of me going. Even if it is "on the way" i will frequently drive past it thinking to myself "I just don't want to spend the time going into the store to find it". This is extremely problematic for me. My old car went about 16000 miles without an oil change because I couldn't muster the effort to spend the 8 minutes it takes to get an oil change. I've gone many winters without a scraper to get snow/ice off of my car. I park outside. My motto is, "If I need it, I would've made time to buy it." I'm not very needy.

Daily necessities: Sleep, personal hygene, ... going to the bathroom..., haircut, shaving, combing hair (I shave my head, #1, so why am i needing to comb my hair). All potential for neglect.

Responsibilities: Paying bills, doing chores. I've recently adopted "Automatic payment" from for all of my bills. Before that I was often late on bills. Not because I didn't have money, but I just pushed off the action of writing out a check and mailing it until I had time to do so. Now I get overdrafts because my checking account doesn't have enough money in it while my savings has plenty. I know I should check up on my account to make sure things will go through but I don't. I often don't do chores at all. Someone asks me to do something and I say "Yeah, i'm busy at the moment I'll do it later". Days go by, no action is taken.

Immediate favors: I have a reallllly strong reaction to people asking for immediate favors. Like if somebody wants a ride somewhere distant, I have a hard time budging. One of the most annoying things that occurs is that my Dad often comes outside when I'm smoking and says "Hey while you're out here, why don't you help me ...". Every single time, I just want to say "&@@# it, I'm moving out" (But see next section).

Moving out. I have enough money and ability to support myself, I'm 25, and my bank account is overflowing (See inability to go shopping). I could've moved out years ago (Well I did for college, but I moved back because i'm dumb). I just can't fit apartment investigation into my schedule because it competes with my free time. I have no attachment to my parents' house or location. In fact, I am more annoyed by them than pleased. My dad asks for too many small favors and my mom asks too many questions.

I could go on and on about this, but I'm going to keep it from being a wall of text and just list some of the other things that are affected by this. School projects (resulting in failed courses), favors, routine checkups with doctors/dentists, caring for pets' needs (Not my pets, others' pets), abusing disposable eye contacts, leaving viruses active on computers (even though I know I can easily remove them).

Note, I do not lack an abundance of free time, I have a lot of it at my disposal.

I can relate to alot of what you've said, particularly:

I don't know if this was intended to be hilarious or not but this is about the funniest thing I've read in a while. I'm going to save it for a few grins later. Thanks.

Wow. I'm a lot like you, but I'd never think it was an AS issue.

Food - I too don't like to waste time with preparation and cooking. It makes it hard for me to have a good diet unless I invest the time, and I'm not great at entertaining because I really don't have an interest in cooking.

Shopping - I hate it. Even when I want to get something, I hate the time it takes to shop around for a good deal, and I can't stand it if I feel someone is wasting my time.

Daily necessities: Sleep, personal hygene, ... going to the bathroom - Well, I'm rather fixed about getting sleep, but I have to make myself brush and floss regularly.

Responsibilities: Paying bills, doing chores. - I pay bills as soon as they come in so I don't let them pile up. I leave chores until the NEED to get done.

Immediate favors - I try not to be rude, but I don't like people imposing on me.

Moving out - I'd change my arrangements right now, but with the economy the way it is, why would I pay for a place of my own when things can go from bad to worse on short notice. All I do is shower and sleep there anyhow.

I have a lot of free time, but I feel I waste it by doing basically nothing ('nothing' = emailing my friend, posting on WP, reading Cracked.com...all very fun but unproductive nothingness). My homework rarely gets done unless it is simple (not easy, but SIMPLE. By this I mean it is something with a right or wrong answer, as opposed to English homework which means I need to be creative and think of ideas. I'm not an idea machine). I've tried keeping a strict schedule, but I always end up giving up and going back to enjoying hours of nothingness.

I hate the fact that, as a non-cyborg, I need sleep. I would just love to never have to sleep, because then I would have so much free time that I would work AND do nothing (this would actually work. I am more productive during the summer because I get bored of doing nothing).

"But I'm in the middle of doing nothing!" - Yes!

I'm glad people can relate, makes me feel a bit more normal (not quite normal though).

Homework to me was really a dilemna. I mathematically calculated the return on investment for most of the assignments and decided whether or not I needed to do the homework. I took music theory in high school which was a very heavy homework laced class. I outright told the teacher that "I am not going to do the homework, because I don't need to pass the class to get through high school. I'll take an F." The teacher totally understood, which was very cool. I ended up soaking in everything the class had to offer without doing any of the homework. And when it came to the big projects - writing pieces of music - I actually put in a ton of effort and time and wrote somethings that the teacher said was really really good. I loved that class. When I took 3rd semester calculus, I aced the first 3 exams and at that point I was guaranteed a B even if I didn't show up for the rest of the semester. I stopped going to class and just showed up for the final exam guessing (Not cumulative, so it was all material I didn't have a clue about). I ended up with a B+. On the flip side, there were a few computer science courses I took which had homework dished out that wasn't even graded - I sometimes still did the homework...

I failed English 102 the first time around because I pretty much shutdown instead of writing the paper. I hated the topic though, "Violence in the media". The second time around the topic was related to obiesity & fast food. I did very well that time.

If sleep wasn't required, I'd get so much more nothing done I can't even fathom it. Sounds like a dream come true.

It really annoys me when teachers don't bother to grade work that I put a lot of effort into. Last year we had to write a report for history class, and I put loads of effort in and I was really proud of it, and then the next day at school (this was my first history lesson at this school, so I didn't already know), the person next to me informed me that the history teacher never grades the homework so nobody in the class ever bothers to do it. I was like, Now you tell me..

Ton of that matches me (cept the smoking). Though I do take time to go shopping for games, I hate shopping for anything else at all. Too much time away not gaming/reading/studying. I also never did homework for any class in high school. If I could pass without doing it, then there was no point. Why bother wasting the time doing algebra homework when I could study about Ebolavirus instead which was so much more interesting.

And thanks for reminding me, I need to get an oil change myself, I haven't had one done since I bought my car >_>

Basically, anything that is maintenance seems like such an enormous waste of time. Why do things have to be maintained in a fashion that takes my time? I mean, my internet is maintained by an automatic payment of money out of my account. Why the hell can't my car do that? Or my stomach? Or my computer too... I rarely if ever get viruses, I know how to avoid them, but I still hate cleaning off the very few I get.

Hell, why can't new games deliver themselves to my dorm instead of requiring me to go to Gamestop? Actually on second thought, I kinda like browsing the games... it's just so annoying to actually get there. I mean, I gotta put on pants and a shirt and then sandals and then I have go outside and I forget my keys so I have to go back up the stairs to my dorm then back outside to the car, drive the 3 miles to the gamestop, I mean sheesh it's such a huge waste of time and energy.

And sleep... yyeeeeeaaaahhh.... I'm soooo glad I'm wasting 30% of my entire lifetime completely oblivious to everything. Though recently it hasn't been quite as bad. The melatonin I started taking to help my sleep has drastically increased my REM sleep as well and I've been able to Lucid Dream quite often.

For me, getting the piece of paper that employers look at was enough. I have no interest in impressing anyone by spending more time doing stuff I don't want to do. I got my degree. I found an employer who looks at people not at grades, and according to them I'm "one of the best hires ever". So looking back at all the work I didn't do and the grades which resulted - No regret. Then again, I always knew money never bought happiness, so getting a top notch high paying job wasn't interesting to me. I don't recommend taking my advice, I just may be extremely lucky.

Meh, I laughed out loud when my Captain was giving a briefing and said the most important things in the military were the 1st and 15th (paydays) because I care nothing about money. Everyone else was all rapt and clearly agreeing. I don't understand why money is so important, but w/e. I've got internet, I've got my computer, food, a roof, and electricity and water. I'm happy. I don't need some giant fancy house or super fast car. I don't need a big screen TV or cable. I don't see why money is so important on a personal lever. I fully understand it's current world and economic importance, just don't understand how it got there.

That didn't go over well ><

Absolubtly yes, I evalute my time at 20$/hour and put it into account when doing anything.

20$/hour? Thats pretty low.

What amazes me is how some people get excited about overtime opportunities to make extra bucks. The sheer thought of overtime makes me uneasy.

I'd rate my free time as high as 100$/hr.

And as for sleep. If only I could rid myself of the need for sleep. Sounds like a dream come true.

I don't like to prepare meals, either, but I sure do appreciate it. I hate shopping, too, and personal hygene, well, maybe only enough to get by, I guess. I always wear my hair in a ponytail, as it doesn't take much time, and is simplest, and keeps it out of my hair, blouse, pants, shoes, etc, and I'm good to go. Never anything fancy. Bills, as soon as they come, then I can forget all about them, and not worry. Until they come again.