@josh_is_exciting That's Ok anytime. But I do feel that a lot of my wasted time has been by far the most productive, since that was when I learned what matered and gained wisdom. The world is full of busy people many of whom are doing a lot more harm than good, and a lot of what needs doing is cleaning up the mess created by shallow people who were always too busy to stop and think, or even consider if their actions were harmful or not. He pedals the old idea that all the harm in the world is caused by evil intent, in fact that is rare, by far the greatest amount of harm is done by the folly of well intentioned people. Just look at religion, and then imagine what would happen if all the fundamentalists and others stopped wasting time.

@Fernapple Another way I like to put it is that the world is full of people doing rather than being.

I regard my stepchildren as an illustration of this. I came into their lives when they were respectively a junior and senior in high school My own children exited the nest a decade earlier, and just missed the testing culture of "no child left behind", but my stepchildren were caught up in it. I was astounded at the narrowness of their daily existence -- go to school early in the morning, then to extracurriculars (important to have on your CV to get into the best colleges), then a hurried dinner with hardly a grunt of interaction with your parents, then hit the books until 1 or 2 am, often with the "assistance" of friends via text, Skype and social media, a too-short night of "sleep", rinse and repeat.

This, in microcosm, is the "life of quiet desperation" that many partake of throughout their adult lives, and they were getting an earlier start on it. I like to think I had some influence on calling them out of that rat race, especially my stepson, who has had to slow down and approach life more mindfully for the sake of his sanity. My stepdaughter, who I regularly grouse about in this space for other reasons, at least quit a lucrative but soul-crushing job in finance, and took a much lower paying but far more meaningful job. A horrific "waste" of her business acumen and training by the lights of her former associates at the first job, but it's that "waste" that she has built her personal meaning and purpose on, and I affirm her for that.