Busy waiting?
What we can learn from computers
Waiting. Waiting is such a common state that we all go through it. Whether we are waiting for a loved one to return or for an opportunity, we have all had to wait at one point or the other.
But what makes waiting important is that we are always waiting for something throughout our lives. We spend extended periods of our lives waiting for certain conditions to be satisfied. However, the challenge is that if we are not careful, waiting becomes very stressful, anxious, and wasted time.
In Computer Science, we have a term called busy waiting. When a running program, i.e., a process, is trying to gain access to some shared resource, it checks, and if it fails to access it, it continues to check it. You can imagine it as you continually refresh your message box, waiting for that message from a loved one or refreshing your mail box waiting to see that job offer. This cycle continues until it gains access to the resource or the running program ends.
If you look carefully at the process, you will see that the process did no meaningful work while the process was busy waiting. It was checking and checking and then checking some more. So the process wasted time and resources because it was waiting for a single shared resource.
So, why do I bring up busy waiting? Because I find a parallel between how this occurs and how we (humans) tend to handle waiting periods. From experience, it is easy to fall into this cycle of busy waiting, i.e., refreshing your mail throughout the day. Anxiety also fills up this period of busy waiting, and we cannot get anything meaningful done. As busy waiting is a waste of resources in a computer, it is also a waste of life for us humans.
After going through busy waiting a couple of times, I decided that there must be a better way to handle waiting periods. So I asked myself, what can I do right now to add value to the future “Olamide” and the people around me? The answers that result from this question are surprisingly numerous. Your time and life are so valuable that you can’t waste it anxiously busy waiting.
Personally, the answers to that question involved thinking deeply about the kind of person I want to become, then taking small steps daily as I become more of that person. I learned more about my field, took up new hobbies, e.g., construction work (I recommend this), built relationships, and more. The answers for you might be different, but I am confident that it would be better than busy waiting. Over time, I even forgot that I was waiting for something, and when that thing occurred, it was a pleasant surprise. I used my waiting period productively, and you can do it too.
Therefore, grab the day, don’t let the wait for something essential to dominate your life. Do not waste the time and effort. Deploy it into something productive for you and the people around you.
