A few days ago, a stressed-out gamer confessed on ResetERA he was considering giving up on gaming, as he felt the time spent could be put to "better" use. The thread somehow struck a chord here, not because I agree, but because the mentality more and more people fall for is a very dangerous and worrying one. This reply by Benzychenz perfectly sums up my thoughts:

A mentality to be “productive” all the time is toxic af. If you have enough money to be comfortable, and aren't neglecting your household duties and your family, there is nothing wrong with enjoying a hobby to yourself in some downtime.

As one grows older, spending time with games becomes more and more frowned upon: don't you have anything "better" to do?

Downtime isn't just a way to recharge your batteries---to be creative, you need downtime. It's a requirement! Without downtime by watching various silly cartoons in-between coding, the iconic British Oliver Twins never would have created so many successful ZX Spectrum games. Without downtime in the form of thought walks, many famous writers, philosophers, and scientists---Poincaré, Archimedes, Nietzsche; the list is simply too large---would never have created their best work.

An extensive body of research exists that acknowledges the need for decompression, and video gaming is the perfect fit. Yet many grownups are ashamed to admit that they like to game now and then. I recently read an article about the private life of a vice-dean of a befriended university, and I was shocked to read "I like gaming": that must have been the first time I encountered a respected academic proclaiming his love for gaming. Respect indeed!

Some games, such as the almost hundred hours long Wizardry 8, undeniably take up a huge chunk of time, but there's nobody forcing you to finish it in a week, a month, or to play it at all. As I grow older and my interests widen, I find myself fiddling with other things, thus leaning towards shorter pickup-and-play game sessions (thank you Analogue Pocket).

By the way, fiddling with other things should be fun, it should not be productive or be turned into money. This Kevin Comics better expresses the problem:

Author Derek Sivers embodies the "time is money" mantra in his about page:

I hate to waste a single hour. I feel the precious value of time, most of the time. I imagine my time as worth $1000 an hour, and ask myself what's worth $1000. Watching a TV show? Absolutely not. (Game of Thrones was 70 hours, so would have cost $70,000 to watch.)

I'm sure Derek didn't mean it like that as the paragraph ends with him prioritizing family time, but still: he clearly misses a critical point here: perhaps to him watching Game of Thrones feels like a "waste of time" (another very loaded statement), but to others, it's a way to offload stress, to relax, and perhaps even to get inspired. The act of comparing time to money is despicable, a typical sickness of our capitalistic society. If you don't like watching TV, then don't. But if you do, then so what? You don't need to be productive all the time, even though it's at times very compelling to constantly accomplish something, especially if others then can congratulate you. Feels good, right?

Continuous productivity is not only toxic, but also greatly diminishes your creative potential over time: that's a proven fact. How about that.

In a TV show yesterday evening (sorry Derek, I'm clearly a slacker), a local celebrity DJ was interviewed. He recently turned 45 and slowly but surely felt the 50 breathing down his neck, to which he responded: "the next 5 years, I'm going to squeeze everything I can out of it!", by which he clearly targeted the work-related lemon to squeeze, as he proceeded to give examples from his music career. While that's great, and I'm rooting for the guy, a few interview questions earlier, we learned about his painful divorce that was the result of a too devoted work life. I was confused. I'm not sure whether or not he just wanted to provide socially acceptable answers or he just refuses to see what happens when all you do is "be productive".

The problem with this attitude is that it's not just rampant, but the required attitude to "succeed". In job interviews I helped coordinate when I was working in the industry, the HR manager always lead the conversation with a very annoying question: "what do you do as a hobby?" If the answer wasn't "reading up on technical books" or "hacking away, look at my GitHub profile!" but simply "hanging out" or "playing games", the conversation would always end with a telling we'll let you know, even though those candidates probably show higher resilience and more creativity compared to the productivity addicts.

Of course management refuses to believe this. After all, time is money. Thank you, Benjamin Franklin.