In Praise of Wasting Time by Alan Lightman

 

For several semesters now, I have become alarmed at the large number of college students who tell me they have panic disorders and chronic anxiety.  I feel for them.  Alan Lightman, in his book In Praise of Wasting Time (TED Books/Simon & Schuster, 2018), argues that in our lives today we simply have no time or space to process what’s happening and what’s demanded of us, much less learn difficult lessons and concepts.

Suffice to say everyone is stressed.  For college students, they have no time to digest material and fully comprehend its importance.  Lightman, a physicist and writer, blames our “wired world,” including the internet, social media, and the “frenzied pace and noise” of daily life with all its increased expectations.  He cites a Pew survey that found the average American teenager sends or receives more than 110 text messages a day.  Anecdotally, I have stepped on the college elevator and found every person tapping away or swiping on their phones:  an eerie quiet with only the tap, tap, tapping of fingers on a screen.

I often ask students about the obstacles to achievement in their college lives.  There are predictable culprits:  lack of preparation in high school; the difficulty of their course load; lack of time to study; working too many hours.  The surprise on the list, quite near the top of every survey, is loneliness, yet, we live in the communication age with smartphones that constantly keep us connected.  People, Lightman notes, take their laptops and iPads on vacation with them to check email.  Some students sleep with their phones on their chests, he says, and almost everyone keeps it within arm’s reach every minute of the day.  Yet, students fear feeling lonely.  Keeping the phone close by is one way to combat that loneliness.

On an academic level, students have never been taught to prioritize the information flooding through their devices.  Lightman says students desperately need better critical thinking skills to analyze how information fits into history, culture, and current events.  Students cannot think laterally; information comes in without connection to other areas or synthesis into thinking and writing.  It seems like no one is asking the question, how does what is learned connect to the larger picture?  What is the historical, human, social, or philosophical context?  This flood of information, this constant “breaking news,” only adds to the anxiety and uncertainty.

Lightman breaks down the kinds of thinking we need into two categories:  divergent and convergent thinking.  In the former, we have the “ability to explore many different avenues and solutions to a problem in a spontaneous and non-orderly fashion.  In convergent thinking, we have “the more logical and orderly step-by-step approach to the problem.”  Divergent thinking is critically essential to Lightman’s view that we need more time to analyze this flood of information and decide what is important.  We need time to breathe and time for silence and reflection.

I tell super-stressed students to plan their day with time for their studies and time for recreation.  Many are surprised to hear that, but I insist:  schedule time for recreation, to sit and stare off into space, and do not be intimidated by those who would call that wasting time.  Lightman has some insightful things to say about this, including that procrastination, the problem most identified by struggling students, might actually be beneficial.  It is only in the wired world that we must focus our attention on demand and take immediate action.  We cannot allow circumstances to bully us into leaping before carefully thinking through all considerations.

Lightman cites social psychologist Graham Wallas, who broke down the stages of creative thinking to:  preparation, incubation, illumination, and finally, verification.  This is also the way we learn.  We prepare by learning material; we allow the material to percolate in the brain; we come to a place of insight and understanding; and then we verify what we know through a test or evaluation.  This process takes time, and each student has a method that is unique to his or her character.  The way we study is dependent on how each of us learns.

Many students live with multiple people in the often small spaces they call home.  It is difficult to have a dedicated study space and have the time to think about what they are learning in silence and solitude.  Lightman advocates for the necessity of solitude as a condition critical to learning and understanding.  He says he has encountered many scientists in his field (physics) and artists (he is the author of the novel, Einstein’s Dreams, among other works), who “embrace solitude.”  They “practice their craft in solitude.  They draw strength from being alone…”  Students, then, should not fear loneliness.  It is a tool to enhance their studies and can be counterbalanced by scheduling time with friends or loved ones after periods of intense, solitary concentration.

Alan Lightman’s book has implications for how we live and learn.  The pace of our lives and the cascade of information we receive each day will never diminish.  What we can do is learn to slow down every moment and commit ourselves to a life of contemplation with periods of silence and solitude.  We can also leave our screens in other rooms and stare off into space as a critical method of thinking and learning.  Who knows what discoveries we will make while appearing to waste time.