This morning, a friend posted a link to an Economist article on the hidden cost of Gangnam Style and it got me thinking. Also, laughing (I may have also revisited YT’s Gangnam Style video collection). Please notice how I am wasting my time in a blog post even now. It’s like I have learned nothing.
Anyway, I think we can all freely admit that we could all work on honing our time management skills. Here are few of my favourite tips and tricks for those of you feeling inclined to work on this right now rather than continue reading this. Go for it.
The always entertaining “Gangnam Style” video hit a milestone this week by surpassing two billion views on YouTube, making it the most watched clip of all time. The Economist illustrates for us, in a delightful graph format, that the 4:12 minute video amounts to more than 140m hours (16,000 years) of our collective time. Yeah. 16,000 years. You read that correctly. Take another sip of that coffee. I needed it too. The graph shows us how long things like Stonehenge took to complete and begs the question of whether this was time well spent for humankind.
FAIR QUESTION, Economist.
I often question if my need to revisit choice video moments in old Star Trek episodes is worth my time but I have decided it hasn’t been time wasted at all. I argue that creativity and passion is what makes us unique individuals. I still love how much creativity is spawned by such passionate viewings.
Take for example the Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE Challenge. My adolescent nerd self still can’t believe I live in a reality where we are actually trying to create a real-life tricorder device. Incentive prizes. 10 million. Potential life changing innovations for the whole world. Would we have thought to do this without legions of fans watching and loving a show like Star Trek? Maybe. But maybe not.
This particular post might not have been as compelling had I told you the hours I spent watching Carly Ray Jespen’s Call Me Maybe video. At first I thought I hated it. Then I realized, just like that damn LEGO Movie song, I was goner. But for some people (definitely me), music helps improve productivity and allows me to create the possibility of doing some great with my time. Baby steps though – this blog post is no Stonehenge. It’s not even the LEGO Millenium Falcon. Which is a priority for this weekend.
Time well spent, right?
