Nagarjuna, the 2nd-century Madhyamaka Buddhist philosopher, argued that time has no independent existence — not as mysticism, but as a logical proof. His argument in the 'Mūlamadhyamakakārikā' runs roughly: the present moment, to be present, must be distinguishable from past and future. But the moment you examine it, it has already shifted. The present borrows its identity from the other two. Time, he concluded, is relationally constituted — it exists only as a web of dependencies, never as a standalone thing. Here's what this does to the ordinary anxiety of 'wasting time': it quietly dismantles it. You cannot waste something that was never a container in the first place. What you can do is attend poorly to the relations that constitute your experience right now — the half-read message, the conversation you were in but not with, the meal you ate while reading this. Nagarjuna's move isn't to say time is an illusion and therefore nothing matters. It's the reverse: because time is nothing but relations, every relation is what time actually is. The quality of your connections — to people, tasks, thoughts — is not something you do with time. It is the time.

What specific relation — a conversation, a task, a person — have you been treating as a backdrop to your day rather than the thing itself?

Drawing from Madhyamaka Buddhist Philosophy — Nagarjuna ('Mūlamadhyamakakārikā', c. 2nd century CE)