This article was captured from the You Are Here audio collection by Oliver Burkeman in the Waking Up app. Oliver Burkeman is the author of The New York Times bestseller Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, about embracing limitation and finally getting around to what counts. For many years, he wrote a popular column…

This article is reposted from The School of Life.  We tend to reproach ourselves for staring out of the window. You are supposed to be working, or studying, or ticking off things on your to-do list. It can seem almost the definition of wasted time. It seems to produce nothing, to serve no purpose. We…