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As an avid reader and outdoors enthusiast, I feel there’s a lot of value on “wasting” time with a movie or limited series.

Absolutely, there are so many better things to do and experience than watching TV, but no one should be stressing out about maximizing their time doing them.

In fact, going against that mindset once in a while, and allowing yourself to not do the thing you think you should be doing, is an experience by itself.

Also, it doesn’t need to be a complete waste of time. If you like history or art, there’s a lot of content both as fiction and non fiction that you would find intellectually stimulating (I highly recommend Criterion for this)

One cold November night my wife picked a movie called Babette's Feast. I absolutely loved the photography. I did some research and found it was inspired by Danish painter Hammershoi, which I never heard of. For Christmas, my wife gave me a beautifully printed, limited edition of his work by the Jacquemart museum in Paris.

Later this year we plan to make a stop in Copenhagen on our way to Sweden to visit friends, so we can see Hammershoi work at the museums.

Seriously you can have a very pure experience interacting with media. I did a mushroom trip ~5 years ago and was having a not great time walking around outside. Cars, other people, sun, bugs etc. were all not sitting right. I went home and watched "Life in Colour", an Attenborough documentary about amazing uses of color in animals. It was a top experience and I still remember scenes from it years later.

Anyway don't throw the baby out with the bathwater and all that, there is a reason we developed digital entertainment.

Wasted time should not be defined as unproductive time, it should be time you did not experience, time you were completely clocked out, not even enjoyed, not relaxed or relished. Wasted. It is a subtle difference but critical to remember if you want to reclaim your time rather than claiming it for capitalism.
> allowing yourself to not do the thing you think you should be doing, is an experience by itself.

In my life, I have a term for that. It's called everyday.