Bestselling author and MIT Professor, Alan Lightman, reveals the benefits of wasting time and allowing our minds to freely roam.
We have apps, smart watches and calendars that constantly remind us to be productive and stop wasting time. We have created a frenzied lifestyle in which time is money, with not a minute to be wasted, and the twenty-four hours of each day are carved up, dissected, and reduced down to small units of efficiency.
Professor Alan Lightman documents the rush and heave of the modern world, and examines the many values of ‘wasting time’ – for replenishing the mind, for creative thought, for finding and solidifying the inner self and letting the mind lie fallow without attempting to accomplish anything and without any assigned tasks.
Carl Jung did his most creative thinking and writing when he took time off from his frenzied practice in Zurich to go to his country house. Gustav Mahler routinely took three or four-hour walks after lunch, stopping to jot down ideas in his notebook. Albert Einstein described letting his mind ‘roam’ to make connections between concepts that were previously unconnected.
In this timely and essential book, Professor Alan Lightman investigates the creativity born from allowing our minds to freely roam. In Praise of Wasting Time teaches us all that sometimes, the best thing to do is to do nothing at all.
- 120 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub
In Praise of Wasting Time
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Table of contents
- Cover
- Dedication
- Chapter 1: A Village in Cambodia
- Chapter 2: The Grid
- Chapter 3: The Rush and the Heave
- Chapter 4: Play
- Chapter 5: The Free-Grazing Mind
- Chapter 6: Downtime and Replenishment
- Chapter 7: Chronos and Kairos
- Chapter 8: Half Mind
- Acknowledgments
- About the Author
- Notes
- Copyright
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Yes, you can access In Praise of Wasting Time by Alan Lightman in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Psychology & Creative Ability in Psychology. We have over 1.5 million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.