“Why don’t you just get it delivered?”
I asked my dad as he plopped the 20kg curtains onto the backseat of the car. It took us 15 minutes to drive from where we had breakfast, another 20 minutes to stop the engine, open the doors, walk over to the shop and back to the car in the blazing hot sun.
That’s 35 minutes wasted.
In 35 minutes, I could have finished a task at work, cooked a simple lunch (and ate it), or completed a session of HIIT.
He responded that delivery is expensive. But as I calculated, the amount we saved on the delivery fee wasn’t worth the time and energy nor the amount of petrol we spent on this chore. Delivery is obviously the smarter choice.
But as I think back, I realised something about this event.
I was neither at work nor scheduled for any goal-oriented activity. I was spending time with my family. This isn’t about efficiency or measuring cost vs benefit.
Why does it matter what we do or “waste” our time on?
In this world where our cabs come in 3 minutes, our groceries arrive automatically and we get our questions answered in seconds with AI, we have no patience for anything.
Everything we do needs to be completed now, and we’re always looking ahead.
We lengthen our strides and rush to our next destination, chow down our foods, and constantly think—what should we do next?
We don’t find joy doing nothing.
We don’t notice or get curious about the world around us.
We don’t even savour what we’re doing or appreciate what just happened.
We let technology tell us what to do, where to go, how to go, what to say, what to be curious about.
In my other interactions with people, I do feel the weight of this.
There are some I really appreciate and enjoy.
They explore and debate on topics in an unnecessarily deep way. They stop and appreciate the shells of snails and how they don’t look like Gary in SpongeBob. They create scenes our heads from delicious dumplings in a restaurants in ways that don’t make sense (or do they?) They ask and ask, listen and expand.
They remove the concept of time without intentionally doing so. While standing in the queue, strolling to the next place, waiting for the rain to stop.
As the year begins, it’s good to remind ourselves that in the world that’s moving fast and AI accelerating things further, to slow down, savour the moment and appreciate the little things in life.