Two thousand, five hundred and forty six. Those are hours, by the way. Two thousand, five hundred and forty six hours that I spent on making videos with plastic bricks.
Now picture this: it's a beautiful Saturday, the weather just couldn't be better, and all your friends want to hang out with you. Instead, you spent the whole day sitting inside, in a dark room, and you're essentially playing with little plastic toy bricks. It starts out as just one Saturday, but then you keep going, and there goes another day, another week, another month, and before you know it, you've spent most of your free time with one particular thing. After all, this year we have a very special anniversary, right? A ten-year anniversary. I mean, ten years ago, I started making brickfilms.
(Laughter)
[Brickfilms]
They're little animated movies created by using the stop-motion technique and plastic bricks, hence the name. It works like this: you have an object, you take a photo of it; you move it just a tiny bit, take another photo; move again, take photo, and so on. And then you end up with thousands of photos, and when they're played at the fast rate, the illusion of movement is created.
This is, of course, a very time-consuming process. Therefore, it's not a strange thing to spend a whole sunny Saturday with this. Together with my younger brother Thomas and some friends, we've been doing this for a while now, but we aren't always staying indoors in the darkroom. We've also been attending film festivals, even organized some, and we got to win awards with our little movies. Now I'm also teaching children how to make these films. I'm organizing workshops for them, some basically telling them, "Instead of going out on a sunny day, stay inside and play with plastic bricks."
(Laughter)
So most of my free time in these 10 years has been dedicated to make plastic bricks move. And this is all time that I'll never get back. So I started to ask myself, "Is all of this wasted time?" I mean, all the hours that I invested in this could have been used for so many other things, right?
[wasted time?]
Well, I believe that it's not a bad thing if you waste time. Therefore, it is OK if you waste time, and you should probably waste more.
Some of you seem very relieved with this info: "Waste more time, no problem. I can do that." It might be a bit confusing because, after all, we're always being told to maximize our potential to live life to the fullest, and oftentimes that seems to include not wasting our time. I mean, we like scrolling through social media, we like watching countless hours of television shows, but sometimes we might blame ourselves for that afterwards. We might feel guilty if we just binge-watch several episodes of our favorite show. This comes from the fact that we don't consider these activities to be part of our greater goals in life, like pursuing a career, forming a family. They're really just ways to pass the time.
So when I started to ask myself if I was wasting time, first I looked it up in a dictionary. It is defined as "to allow time to elapse in an unproductive manner." OK. This can mean a few things. The first being you're unproductive, of course, when you're doing absolutely nothing: maybe lying in bed, not watching anything, not even sleeping. Just doing nothing.
Second way to view the term: you're unproductive when you're not achieving anything or creating anything, like you're just going through that social media.
And the third way would be that you're committing to low-priority activities instead of the things that you feel like you should be doing. You're basically procrastinating.
For example, I wouldn't consider cleaning my room a waste of time, but it can be viewed that way if I should be working on an important paper for university instead. I mean, of course, this is very subjective. Maybe you do consider cleaning your room more important than a stupid paper, but for me, this paper is part of my greater goal in life. I finish the paper, it helps me finish university, I get a job, and so on. So why would I want to waste time with something that is not part of that goal?
So there are many ways to waste time and also some benefits to gain, but still the question stands: "Can time go to waste?"
[Can time go to waste?]
Objectively speaking, "No, it can't." Time can't go anywhere, except forwards. So, no matter what you decide to do with your day, time itself will just go on. So, as time itself cannot be wasted, why would you want to view your time as wasted anyways? I mean, many studies have shown that you are more productive and more creative if you occasionally allow yourself to focus on something different or nothing at all.
A study by Dijksterhuis in 2004 focused on something similar. He looked into the conscious and unconscious thoughts when making decisions. In the form of experiments, he presented participants with a decision-making problem and a few answers to choose from. He divided the participants in three groups: the first ones had to give their answers immediately; the second group could consciously, actively think about the problem, and then they had to decide; and the third group was distracted for a bit with a completely different task, and then they had to answer. The study concluded that the unconscious thinkers, meaning the ones who were distracted for a bit, made better and reasonable decisions.
There are, of course, many ways to waste time, and apparently some benefits to gain. My preferred activity would be making brickfilms. Together with my brother Thomas and friends, we've concluded that's our time with this is far from wasted. I mean, even if we spend all these hours, we still don't regret any sunny Saturday that we spent with this. And at this point, it has even become a part of my identity, a part of who I am. People have even called me Mr. Brick before.
(Laughter)
So, of course, even if you don't have something to show off, like a movie, a product of your wasted time, if you don't have that, it doesn't matter. I mean, maybe you like scrolling through social media, maybe you like going for a walk or meditate for an hour. These activities all offer positive side effects, like you're learning about your friends online, you're maybe getting mentally and physically fit. And at the very least, these activities will allow yourself to rest and focus on something different.
In the beginning of my talk, I brought up the idea that it's a good thing to waste time. Of course, if you waste 15 hours every day, it might not be more beneficial than only one hour, but there's no golden rule when or how much time you should waste to benefit. Maybe think of setting yourself a certain timeframe to actively waste your time, and then move on with your duties. Because, after all, wasting time remains a subjective term, and therefore, it's up to you how you want to view this term.
Don't let it be negative or be guilty about it. Instead, be happy about wasted time. Look at all the joy and benefits that these activities can bring to your lives. Because that is never a waste of time.
Thank you.
(Applause)
