If you've ever walked into a diner or a cafe on a Saturday morning, there is a chance you've seen a group of older gentlemen all sitting together having breakfast, reading the newspaper, and just living their best life. I always wonder about these guys, like what's the story?
What I do know is that at this point in their lives, they have cracked the code on how to waste time doing the thing they love. Which, let's be honest, is the thing we're all striving towards every day.
The secret of life is to waste time in the ways that you like.
What I find interesting about those tables is that they look so relaxed, almost like they have nowhere to be and nothing urgent demanding their attention. Coffee cups get refilled, the same story gets told three different ways, and nobody seems to care if the conversation drifts from politics to sports to whatever someone saw on television the night before. From the outside, it might look like they are wasting time, but I suspect that they would tell you they have finally figured out how to spend it correctly.
Most of us spend the majority of our lives doing the exact opposite. We pack our calendars, we rush from meeting to meeting, we treat every spare moment like it needs to be optimized, and somehow we still end the day feeling like we didn't get enough done. Then we repeat the process the next day, convincing ourselves that someday down the road, we will slow things down and enjoy the little moments a bit more.
But that "someday" is always a moving target. It waits until the next promotion, the next project, the next stage of life, when everything is supposed to magically settle down. The funny part is that if you talk to people who are further along in their lives, many of them will tell you that time never really opens up the way you think it will. You have to learn how to claim small pieces of it while you are still in the middle of the chaos.
That is why those breakfast tables fascinate me. Somewhere along the way, those guys decided that a couple of hours on a Saturday morning with friends, coffee, and conversation was worth protecting. It is not glamorous, and it certainly does not show up on a résumé, but it might be one of the most honest versions of success you will ever see.
Because when you really think about it, most of us are working our entire lives to eventually earn the freedom to do simple things like that. To sit somewhere with people we enjoy, talk about whatever comes to mind, and not feel like we should be somewhere else doing something more important.
So maybe the real goal is not just to work toward that moment decades down the road. Maybe the smarter move is to start figuring out small ways to create it now, even if it is just an hour here or there where you allow yourself to slow down and spend time doing something that feels completely unnecessary and completely enjoyable at the same time.