You Can't Recycle Wasted Time

Earth Day was celebrated this Saturday the 22nd, and my social media was flooded with posts and comments about how we can be more ecologically friendly. I saw countless pictures of friends planting trees, picking up litter, and taking out recycling. While Earth Day is a valuable time to think about our planet, I saw a tweet from my friend Haden that I considered to be of equal importance, “You can’t recycle wasted time.”

I will admit, I am often one to put the “pro” in procrastination. I felt the full effects of this unfortunate habit today as I took a Chemistry test — a bit unprepared. Yes, things get busy towards the spring semester. However, I had plenty of opportunities throughout the last week to study, when instead I chose to work on other classes, check Snapchat, do my laundry, or watch Netflix. In the three hours prior to my test this evening I attempted to cram four lectures’ worth of material into my studying. At this point, I wished that my past self had been more conscious of the time I had been wasting on pointless tasks. I left the exam disappointed, because I know that if I had studied, I would have performed much better. Try as I might, those hours are gone, and my grade must now face the consequences.

How many minutes do we spend each day idle? Think about the amount of times we look at our phone in the span of an hour. Perhaps we enjoy sleeping in just a bit too much. Regardless of how we choose to kill time, the fact remains that we will never have that time back. As I read Haden’s tweet, I realized that I had been scrolling through Twitter for twenty minutes, and would now be late to meet another friend for coffee. I was wasting not only my own time, but hers as well. Appalled at myself, I closed the app and then scrambled to meet my (forgiving) friend.

Each and every minute of our lives could be invested productively in the betterment of ourselves or others, whether it be showing up early to complete our group project, waking up early to grab breakfast with an old friend, volunteering in our communities, or choosing to make a new memory in our lifespan rather than compose a new tweet for our timeline.

It’s okay to treat ourselves once in a while, but my GPA and I will feel the impact of my wasted time. We need not all face these negative consequences. We can live a life with without regrets. How will you choose to invest your time?

Forever blue,

Grace Luebcke

Kansas FFA Secretary