22. A big old waste of time

I hated turning 27.

I know, sounds ridiculous, but at the time, I remember it feeling like the end of my early 20s. The end of my youth. The end of my life.

OK, I may have put that last one in for dramatic effect, but I was definitely having some sort of crisis. And as my Birthday is in December, these crippling thoughts were looming over me for the entire year. With their pal “Christ, I’m almost 30, what on earth have I got to show for that!?” never too far away.

Of course, a slither of rationality would have probably quashed these worries.

Though convincing rational self-talk can often be easier said than done, and as someone who doesn't need an excuse to be overly self-critical, all my life’s decisions up to that point were now under the microscope. The mental beat-down had begun.

Am I just a massive failure? Have I wasted my entire life? Have I pissed it all away on GTA San Andreas, creeping through social media, and guzzling pints?

An almost-27 year old crippled by a sense of wasted life. Of wasted potential. Fun times.

Now, present day me is going to intervene here, and he's going to stick up for video games, Instagram and Lash. Obviously, they can all be, within reason, very good fun. So were they really the terrible use of time that I thought they were? Well, there's a school of thought that states the time you enjoy wasting isn't wasted time. So possibly, but also, possibly not.

However, at the time, I was convinced that this apparent unlived life and feelings of unfulfilled potential was at least partly down to an excess of the above pastimes.

I may have had the best intentions for moderate use, but as we all know with things such as social media and video games, it’s very easy to start, and then suddenly…

And it's even easier to hit a point of diminishing returns. The enjoyment has gone, but we continue anyway.

Then, other than a bit of a headache, feeling being a bit irritable, a bit depressed, and leaving Facebook with the realisation that your mate’s dad’s a massive racist, there wasn't an awful lot to show for the investment in time spent.

Still, they say pain’s a teacher, and after excessive video games, hangovers and social media scrolling, one thing became abundantly clear: there’s a direct correlation between how we spend our time and how we feel.

Even though this may be pretty self-evident, I think it’s a key point when it comes to our overall wellbeing, and one that’s often under-looked.

Would it be oversimplified to say that we are the product of what we do? Possibly, but I do think it carries a certain degree of truth.

Spend a lot of time in the pub, we’ll probably become better at drinking. Spend a lot of time in the office, we’ll probably become better at our jobs. Spend a lot of time on the treadmill, we’ll probably become better at running. And so forth.

And as I approached 30, the importance of how we spend our time and that ‘behaviours determine outcomes’ penny was starting to drop.

That feeling of having not really done anything with my life was a rather strange one. Naturally, it’s fairly demoralising. But on the other hand, also quite motivating.

I may have been filled with (possibly unnecessary) regret about having spent an unholy amount of time gunning down gangsters on GTA and gunning down lagers in real life, but on the flip side, had an urge to do something about it.

If ‘behaviours determine outcomes’, then I’d better look at that behaviour.

When it comes to our behaviour, I think there's a fairly common disconnect between what we often say we wish we'd done in the past, and what we’re willing to do in the present.

It’s easy for us to say “I wish I’d exercised more this past year”, though it’s much harder to actually get up and go to the gym.

I was a prime example of that; I had these lofty ambitions, without actually putting in the effort to achieve them.

I was beginning to have a bit more of an appreciation of the value of how we use our time.

This was a perspective changer, and generally helped me stop being such a lazy fucker towards my late 20s (well, less of one anyway).

It may not be for everyone, but for me personally, I've found this to have been a predominantly positive thing. As such, when it comes to our overall wellbeing, I really believe in the importance of valuing, and trying to be as protective as possible, of our time.

And the idea to write about such a topic came to me towards the end of last year after I had arranged to meet a good pal for a Nando’s.

To cut a short story even shorter, we were due to meet at 7pm, though it got to 7.30pm and with no sight of the pal in question, I patched it and headed home in a strop.

Now, I appreciate this may be seen as a dramatic overreaction, but as I paced round the cold streets of Soho, I was engulfed by that painful thought of “well, this is a bloody waste of time”. I found the accumulation of having rearranged other plans, time spent getting off my sofa and into some clothes, trekking to and from town, waiting around for 30 minutes, having lost the majority of the evening, and the fact that I would now be void of chicken, peri chips and garlic bread, all to be rather frustrating.

As I stormed off in a huff, that correlation between how we spend our time and how we feel once again dawned on me. And that “well, this is a bloody waste of time” feeling wasn’t a particularly optimal place to be, if a serene sense of wellbeing was the goal.

In my frustration, a clip that I’d been recently sent popped into mind. It was a short video of Sylvester Stallone (of all people!). Strange where the mind goes when Nando’s deprived.

I didn’t initially have Rambo down as a wise old sage, but although slightly cheesy, it did resonate with me. If interested, the clip’s here. If not, the general jist of it is around not wasting our most valuable asset; time. Deep, but I liked it.

It’s a similar concept to Ingvar Kamprad’s (the founder of IKEA) thoughts around the value of time. His view is that “You can do so much in ten minutes’ time. Ten minutes, once gone, are gone for good. Divide your life into 10-minute units and sacrifice as few of them as possible in meaningless activity”. Pretty powerful.

(Btw, this is something I read in James Clear’s excellent weekly 3-2-1 newsletter, which I couldn’t recommend more to sign up to).

Though of course, like anything, I’m sure there’s a balance here.

Whereas valuing our time is definitely something I think we should do, the danger is becoming a bit obsessive about it (which, admittedly, my primma donna like departure of Nando’s could be seen as).

Even though we’d have to take advice from the founder of the one of the world’s most successful retail outlets to be fairly sound, if taken as gospel, it does have the potential to be counter-productive. If we feel like we should be optimising every second of our lives, this could easily pile a load of unnecessary pressure on our shoulders.

Suddenly, when we’re smashing back our third bag of Kettle Chips in front of some trash TV, we may be riddled with guilt. Or we may beat ourselves up for having a totally justified lazy day when we're feeling a bit meh.

Rest and recovery is so important, and when we just want a bit of chilled time, we may not want it to be ruined by the potential burden of a '100% productivity all day every day bitchezzz' led conscience.

Time’s a weird thing, isn’t it? On occasions, it can absolutely drag (no, not when you’re reading Blogs and Dogs you cheeky bugger!), but overall, how quickly does it go?

An acknowledgment of this, and that how we spend it can be an indicator in which direction our lives will go can be a powerful thought. And the more we value and protect it then maybe, just maybe, we might be able to do a bit more of the stuff we want, and make the most of our short time here.

Anyway, potential food (not Nando’s, I’m afraid) for thought.

Thank you very much for your time.