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Comment by Swizec | Hacker News Reader

You must waste time. As Aftershock21 notes, it is the only way you can be creative rather than productive.

It's also important not to burn out. You are roughly infinitely more useful to your startup when you are well rested than when you are burnt out.

Wasting time helps a lot with that.

Wasting time also gives you a great opportunity to take a step back and gain some perspective on everything and see whether you're working in the right direction, otherwise how do you know you're being productive rather than just doing busywork?

If there's one thing founding a startup has taught me, it's to avoid busywork like the plague and that when you are busy busywork looks the same as being productive.

tl;dr: from the trenches being busy and being productive look the same. You need to waste time to be able to tell the difference.

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From the article, she mentions that she goes for an early-morning walk and watches the sun rise over Oakland. That seems to fit your definition of "wasting time."

Her definition of wasting time seemed to refer instead to realizing what's important to you and what's not, then spending less time on that unimportant stuff. Her "getting up and checking email/Twitter/Facebook" was an example of unimportant stuff. But she gave plenty of examples of taking creative time instead of just staying busy.

"Don't waste time" is not the same as "don't take creative time".

It's important to keep reminding everyone (including myself) that creative time most often looks like wasting time when you feel the weight of the world is on your shoulders.

I've gotten some of my best ideas and insights by farting around on twitter. Or on a four hour coffee with a random friend.

It would be extremely difficult to justify either of those as anything but wasting time.

I you haven't seen it, go read The Programmer's Stone, http://the-programmers-stone.com/the-original-talks/ , which goes into detail about dopamine, stress, brain states and group dynamics, and how it impacts programming and creative thinking.

It's ironic that stressing out about building the next big thing could be preventing you from building the next big thing...

Here here to this. For some reason when I'm taking a shower, I usually come up with solutions to problems that I've never been able to do elsewhere. Probably because when I'm not in the shower, I'm "keeping busy" and that restricts my creative abilities.

But would you say that time in the shower is "wasted" if your mind is actively on and turning over a problem?

I think the idea is that you have do something with the full intention of "wasting" time to trick your mind into thinking creatively. I usually don't step into the shower ready to tackle a hard problem -- it's not the best place to do any kind of work. And I'm sure if I decided to solve a particular problem in the shower, I would probably not come up with a solution -- it's when you don't intend to work, do creative solutions appear in front of you.

When you decide to solve a problem, your mind goes at it with a very direct engineered approach which may not reveal solutions that come from a different angle.

Also, I've found when I can't think of solutions, it's usually due to my mind being tired, and the best way to solve it is to actually waste time -- go for a bike ride or something that forces your mind to stop thinking.

Personally, it took me a long time to realize that time was not wasted. Mostly because it doesn't feel directly productive.

Also, having your mind actively on and turning over a problem defeats the purpose of letting your mind wander freely in search of serendipitous solutions. Having it actively "on" is the same as keeping busy.

"Idle time" would be a better word.

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