The Philosophy of Not Scrolling
How a parking lot, an AI chatbot, and ancient wisdom turned a mundane Tuesday into something else entirely.
Let's be honest. For many of us, much of the time, waiting time at gymnastics means long stretches of doomscrolling. Shorts, reels, TikToks. 30, 60, 90 minutes gone before you know it — time that felt enjoyable but left you empty and drained at the end.
This is the bare minimum wisdom for the modern age: doomscrolling isn't the best way to spend time.
In a pursuit to avoid that very trap, I took it upon myself to just be — and let the time find me.
It started as a joke.
The Prompt That Started It
I was messing around with ChatGPT, testing whether it could explain the history of moral philosophy through a WWE wrestling analogy. (There's a movie scene that does something similar, and I wanted to see how the AI would handle it.)
The wrestling bit was fun. But then I fed it a real situation:
"I'm sitting in the parking lot in front of Barnes & Noble. I have an hour and a half until I have to pick up my daughter. I have my iPad, zero mind-altering substances, don't feel like spending money, already had dinner. Suggest ways to think about my predicament that align with major moral philosophy categories."
ChatGPT gave me the full tour: Virtue Ethics, Deontology, Utilitarianism, Stoicism, Existentialism. Each with its own lens on my 90 minutes of nothing-to-do.
But here's what caught me: I realized I'd built a tool for this exact thing. So I opened it up — freshly deployed on my own site — and prepared to let some ancient wisdom direct my evening.
Then I didn't use it.
Not at first, anyway.
The Wandering
I just... walked. Through spitting cold rain into the empty Tuesday evening bookstore. Past Home Depot and Dick's Sporting Goods, past the temptation of hot coffee and available seats. I wandered.
The philosophy section first, because of course. I know the Stoics well enough, but the other shelves felt foreign. I kept moving.
Then I saw it: a small copy of the Tao Te Ching. The smallest of three options. Something about the compactness — the idea that this massive philosophy could fit in a pocket — made me pick it up.
I kept wandering. Architecture Legos caught my eye — Notre Dame, the Pyramids. I sent photos to my wife. She was excited about Notre Dame but reminded me we have the US Capitol building to build first, sitting unopened from last weekend.
Bargain books. Philosophy again. Art books. Still wandering. Still not consulting any framework or tool or "system" for how to spend the time.
It felt like childhood. Specifically, like evenings at Barnes & Noble with my dad. It was one of his favorite things — just being there, surrounded by possibility, with nowhere particular to go.
The Tool (Finally)
Eventually I pulled up the tool. Scanned the options. Virtue Ethics felt too heavy for end-of-day. Kant felt like work. Stoicism was familiar, comfortable, almost too easy.
But Existentialism caught me:
"Write a strange idea that has no practical purpose."
So I did. Scribbled in my notes:
"You could do a lot worse than spend entire days in a bookstore or library reading wisdom beyond anything you'll find on social media or around our modern society. Why don't we spend our time doing that more? Force ourselves to produce without taking pride in our ability to just be."
The irony wasn't lost on me. I'd just spent an hour doing exactly that — just being — and only now, looking back, did I realize it was permission I'd needed.
We treat presence as luxury. As something earned after productivity. But my duties were done. My daughter wasn't waiting yet. The time was available, and still I felt the itch to optimize it, to capture it, to make it count.
The tool didn't direct my evening. It reflected it back to me. Existentialism didn't tell me what to do; it gave me language for what I'd already chosen.
The Haul
At checkout, my arms were full of things that would horrify a productivity guru:
- A Stranger Things book for my son who "chooses not to read" — meeting him where he is
- A National Parks coffee table book — shared dreaming for our family's vacation theme
- Gorillaz on vinyl — pure aesthetic joy for the basement turntable
- That Tao Te Ching — the smallest one, for my bag, always
I almost bought Yuval Noah Harari's latest. Practical. Informative. Serious. But I put it back. I'll listen to it on audiobook instead. The vinyl won.
The Philosophy I Actually Learned
So here's the philosophy I actually learned: whichever one gets you off your phone is probably the right one.
Each Philosophy's Take on Scrolling
Stoicism would say the feed is outside your control — reject it.
Taoism would say scrolling is forcing against the current — find the downstream path.
Buddhism would notice the craving without satisfaction.
Existentialism would remind you that algorithms are choosing for you until you choose otherwise.
I chose otherwise. For 90 minutes in a parking lot, in the rain, surrounded by big box stores and the hum of highway traffic, I just... was.
It wasn't efficient. It wasn't optimized. It won't show up on any metrics dashboard.
But it felt like the right way to spend the time. And I'm starting to think that feeling — that quiet, unhurried, unmeasured sense of rightness — is the whole point.
The Tao is in the vinyl section. Who knew?
Try It Yourself
The Free Time Tool is simple: tell it how much time you have, describe your situation, choose a question that resonates, and let ancient wisdom guide your next 15-180 minutes.
Open The Free Time Tool →