What an electric whisk taught me about the fear of wasting time

It all started here. A small square kitchen, patterned wallpaper that I’m pretty sure had something to do with chickens, and a flap-fold table where Mum held the bowl while I, kneeling on a stool and resplendent in a 1970s pinny, stirred and occasionally dipped in a finger to taste test.

Then, teenage years, coming home hungry from the bus, rummaging in the pantry of our quirky old house for ingredients to make a sneaky after-school chocolate cake. It went on from there, this lifelong love of food and baking, scribbling down unusual ingredient combinations in cafés and bakeries to try out at home and enjoying the failed bakes as much as the successes. If they smelt and tasted ok then all was well.

So, it surprised even me when I stopped for a while, when suddenly it felt there was just no time for such frivolities.

I thought of this last week as I squeezed some speed-baking into the tiny gap between transcribing an interview and teaching a class. I’m not complaining. I (mostly!) love what I do and feel blessed to be able to do it. But, as I whizzed my slightly lopsided, one-beater-only electric whisk (long story involving homemade ice cream that may not have been worth the havoc it wreaked), creaming furiously through any lumps that dared to persist in my batter, I remembered that phase again.

For a lifelong baker, it is strange to say there was a time when I rarely baked anything. We did the fun kids cookery thing, but I no longer defaulted to baking mode for my own enjoyment. Admittedly, it was a busy time, juggling work and young children, but that wasn’t the main reason. The overriding thing that stood in my way was this:

The electric whisk.

It simply felt like too much time and effort to get that electric whisk out of the cupboard and plug it in.

Really. That was it.

I had become so caught up in stomach-knotting feelings of time-poverty that I honestly thought I couldn’t spare the few moments this small action would take. Life felt so chaotically busy non-stop that the time-investment to move a few things out of the way, take the mixer out, plug it in and then have to do the whole thing in reverse, not to mention those two pesky whisks to wash up... just seemed immense.  And yes, I do realise how ridiculous that sounds.

It is literally the work of 30 seconds to get the whisk out of the cupboard. Another 30 to plug it in and possibly a minute to get the beaters fixed into place (and now I even have a freestanding mixer sitting there challenging me to come up with a better excuse!). Two minutes. I mean, ok, so you do have to add the actual mixing time, but weirdly that was never the thing that held me back. It was always the hurdle of getting it out of the cupboard that felt insurmountable. Like a waste of my precious time.

How many are the things I’ve wanted to try but haven’t, for fear of wasting time? Ironically, these things are always creative, productive, positive and never actually a waste of time. Yet an impatience to get on with my day, my life or ‘more important things’ has meant I’ve often shirked away from them – fearing the apparently colossal time-commitment they imply.

Of course, there are times when we genuinely are too busy. Some stages of life really are. We need the wisdom to recognise these, to say ‘no’ when that’s the right answer. But sometimes, we fall into that chest-tightening sense of hurry, feeling rushed and busy for no good reason. We fall into this crippling fear of ‘wasting time’. Because, what if it doesn’t work? What if it wasn’t worth the effort?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. How time can become such a precious commodity that there’s a risk of penny-pinching it. Our desire not to waste it turns into us not using it at all... feeling frozen. It’s an attitude that can make us forget or forgo the things that are most important. Things we love. Things that remind us who we are. It takes away the God-given moments of breathing deep and full and the creative pursuits which bring us alive.

Also, when we do spend time on something, why do we always want to know in advance what the reward will be?

When I gave up regular 9-5 work some years back, it was often a challenge to just try new things that had no guarantee of success. Because, if we’re sacrificing our precious time, we like to know it’s going to be worth it. There has to be some reward, surely? Financial, praise, kudos...whatever it is. Otherwise, haven’t we just – horror of horrors - ‘wasted our time’?

But for the past few years I’ve been pondering what it really means to waste time and how we shouldn’t be so scared of it. How it's often in the 'timewasting' that our best creativity manages to wriggle free. And yet, how the fear of it that steals precious moments of joy. The joy of just being. The joy of ‘just trying anyway’. Around that time of giving up work I read a wonderful book by Paula Gooder (Everyday God – highly recommended) where she talks about turning aside and trying things even when they might amount to nothing, even when they might seem a waste of time. Just trying anyway. I still struggle to take this on board, but it remains one of the most important things I’ve learnt.

We cannot be productive all the time. Sometimes we need to turn aside and try things that will possibly or even probably fail. And sometimes we need to do things that can’t fail because they are not even attempting to succeed. They are just about being, breathing, living, coming alongside others. There’s no obvious gain or reward.

Except of course, just living like that becomes the biggest reward of all.