"Query: How contrive not to waste one’s time? Answer: By being fully aware of it all the while."

"Ways in which this can be done: By spending one’s days on an uneasy chair in a dentist’s waiting-room; by remaining on one’s balcony all of a Sunday afternoon; by listening to lectures in a language one doesn’t know; by traveling by the longest and least-convenient train routes, and of course standing all the way; by lining up at the box-office of theaters and then not buying a seat; and so forth."

From page 26 of "The Plague" by Albert Camus, which I am rereading. Why did I pick out that passage? I liked the details, but I was also intrigued by the presentation of the problem of being fully aware. Being fully aware is the solution to wasting one's time. But the way to be fully aware demonstrates that the solution is worse than the problem.