My Time (to Waste on Me)

No goals. No metrics. No outcome required.

I have become remarkably good at finding useful things to do with spare time. There is always an email that could be answered, something that could be organized, an article that should be read, a workout that could be logged or one more thing that would make tomorrow slightly easier. I have even managed, on occasion, to turn sleep into another performance metric. Seven hours and twelve minutes. Deep sleep. REM. Recovery score. Apparently just being unconscious for a while is no longer enough. I don't think I am particularly unusual.

We live in a world that has become very good at attaching an outcome to almost everything we do. Walk for your cardiovascular health. Exercise for longevity. Read for professional growth. Meditate to reduce stress. Take a course to improve your skills. Even hobbies sometimes acquire goals, apps, streaks, watches, rankings and equipment that costs considerably more than the hobby seemed to require when we started. There is nothing wrong with any of that. I believe deeply in purposeful activity, setting goals and doing things that improve our health. I have spent a good portion of my professional life encouraging exactly those things. But I wonder if we have crowded out something else.

When did doing nothing useful become a problem?

Think about some of the things we used to do without needing to explain why. Doodle on a piece of paper. Walk somewhere without knowing the distance. Sit on a bench. Toss a ball back and forth. Read something ridiculous. Put music on and stare out a window. Build something badly. Talk to somebody without simultaneously looking at a phone. Start a hobby with absolutely no intention of becoming good at it. None of these needs to become a wellness strategy. That may actually be part of their value.

There is an interesting distinction here. Rest is often treated as the opposite of work, something we permit ourselves after enough productive activity has been completed. But our brains do not divide life quite so neatly into productive and wasted time. Curiosity matters. Play matters. Autonomy matters. Relationships matter. Having some control over what we choose to do matters. And sometimes the healthiest answer to “What am I accomplishing right now?” may simply be: Nothing.

Please don't make this another assignment

There is an important piece of emerging thinking around educator well-being that caught my attention. For years, much of the conversation understandably concentrated on stress, burnout and helping individuals cope with difficult working environments. More recent work is asking a broader question: what actually allows people to flourish where they work? That change in question matters. Self-Determination Theory has long identified three important psychological needs: autonomy, competence and relatedness. In much simpler language, people do better when they have some ownership over what they do (agency), experience themselves becoming capable, and feel meaningfully connected to other people.

Newer work examining school climate pushes the idea further. Instead of asking only how an individual teacher should become more resilient, researchers are examining the organizational and relational conditions that help educators thrive in the first place. Trust matters. Relationships matter. Opportunity matters. Having some autonomy matters. That doesn't mean fifteen minutes of doodling fixes teacher well-being. Thank goodness, because the last thing teachers need is somebody announcing a mandatory Wednesday afternoon doodling initiative, complete with a rubric and a QR code to document participation.

It means something much simpler. Perhaps every healthy life map needs a little territory that doesn't belong to productivity.

My Time

I affectionately call this “My Time (to waste on me).” There are rules. Actually... there aren't. That would rather ruin the point. And, by the way, it feels surprisingly good just to say, “I am going to waste some time on me.”

Your My Time might be fifteen minutes with a coffee and absolutely nothing else. Mine might involve wandering somewhere on foot without recording it. Someone else might draw, garden, play an instrument badly, throw a ball for the dog, make something with their hands, sit outside, read the sports section or have a completely unproductive conversation with somebody they like. The important part is not what you choose. It is that, for a few minutes, you don't have to justify the choice. You don't need to become better at it. You don't need to share it. Nobody needs to see what you produced. It doesn't need to contribute to your professional growth, improve your VO₂ max, increase your step count or make you a more effective human being by Thursday.

And please don't put it on a spreadsheet.

Perhaps “waste” is the wrong word

We spend enormous amounts of time teaching young people to develop agency: make choices, discover interests, build relationships, explore new things and gradually learn what helps them thrive. Adults probably deserve some of that same freedom. Perhaps that is why deliberately “wasting” a little time feels almost rebellious now. For fifteen minutes this week, do something you enjoy for no defensible reason whatsoever. Don't track it. Don't optimize it. Don't turn it into a streak. Don't worry whether you are any good at it. Then notice how you feel afterward.

I call it My Time (to waste on me).

And with that, a doctor's prescription for you: go waste 15 minutes today. Do something, or do absolutely nothing. No outcome required.

Just let those 15 minutes belong to you.

Research Informing this Article

  1. Sonnentag S, Fritz C. The Recovery Experience Questionnaire: development and validation of a measure for assessing recuperation and unwinding from work. J Occup Health Psychol. 2007 Jul;12(3):204-21. doi: 10.1037/1076-8998.12.3.204. PMID: 17638488.
    The Recovery Experience Questionnaire: development and validation of a measure for assessing recuperation and unwinding from work - PubMed
  2. Sabine Sonnentag, Bonnie Hayden Cheng, Stacey L. Parker. 2022. Recovery from Work: Advancing the Field Toward the Future. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior 9:33-60.
    https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-orgpsych-012420-091355
  3. Agolli A, Holtz BC. Facilitating detachment from work: A systematic review, evidence-based recommendations, and guide for future research. J Occup Health Psychol. 2023 Jun;28(3):129-159. doi: 10.1037/ocp0000353. Epub 2023 May 4. PMID: 37141024.
    PubMed
  4. David Newman, Louis Tay and Ed Diener, Leisure and Subjective Well-Being: A Model of Psychological Mechanisms as Mediating Factors. Journal of Happiness Studies, 2014, vol. 15, issue 3, 555-578.
    SCIRP reference
  5. Kuykendall L, Tay L, Ng V. Leisure engagement and subjective well-being: A meta-analysis. Psychol Bull. 2015 Mar;141(2):364-403. doi: 10.1037/a0038508. Epub 2015 Jan 19. PMID: 25602273.
    PubMed
  6. Wamsley, E.J. Offline memory consolidation during waking rest. Nat Rev Psychol 1, 441–453 (2022).
    https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-022-00072-w
  7. Jonathan Smallwood, Jonathan W. Schooler. 2015. The Science of Mind Wandering: Empirically Navigating the Stream of Consciousness. Annual Review of Psychology 66:487-518.
    https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-010814-015331
  8. Zhou, S., Slemp, G.R. & Vella-Brodrick, D.A. Factors Associated with Teacher Wellbeing: A Meta-Analysis. Educ Psychol Rev 36, 63 (2024).
    https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-024-09886-x
  9. Moens M, Vanblaere B, Devos G and Tuytens M (2026) Teacher wellbeing in schools: a systematic review of job demands and job resources. Front. Educ. 11:1709029. doi: 10.3389/feduc.2026.1709029.
    Teacher wellbeing in schools: a systematic review of job demands and job resources
  10. Teacher Occupational Wellbeing Research 2025, Dublin City University.
    Teacher Occupational Wellbeing Research 2025

© 2026 All rights reserved.

LS-Weekly