Imagine you have a free hour — no classes, no meetings, no homework due at midnight. You should feel relieved. Instead, you feel anxious.

You sit down to relax, but a voice in your head starts whispering: “You are wasting time.” “You are falling behind.” “You could be getting ahead on next week’s reading.”

As college students, we are not simply living our lives, we are calculating them. We have forgotten how to just be.

In the modern university experience, every hour has a price tag, and we have become obsessed with one specific metric — return on investment (ROI). We treat our time like capital and our energy like currency. We ask ourselves, consciously or subconsciously, “If I spend two hours at this club meeting, will it look good on my resume?” “If I take this class, is it an easy A?”

We drag ourselves to weekend workshops and sign up for online courses we have zero interest in, just to add a single bullet point to our resume. Without realizing it, we have turned our lives into a giant spreadsheet, an invisible ledger where every action must have a measurable “credit.”

But this isn’t just a Binghamton University thing. It is a human thing.

With this philosophy of productivity, we have all become unintentional disciples of Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill (2, 3). These 18th and 19th-century thinkers are the fathers of Utilitarianism, a branch of consequentialist ethics. The core idea of Utilitarianism is simple; the best action is the one that produces the greatest amount of good, or “utility”, for the greatest number of people (1). In this worldview, the morality of an action is determined solely by its outcome. This logic follows a strict equation: labor yields benefit, which yields results.

If there is no benefit, there is no result. If there is no result, the labor was a waste.

On paper, this makes perfect sense. It is how businesses work — you work for a boss, you provide labor, you generate profit (benefit) and you get a salary (result). The cycle is clean and efficient.

But here is the problem. We have applied this corporate logic to our souls and our relationships.

Look at dating apps, for instance. They are designed like digital catalogs where human beings are reduced to profile pictures. We can literally apply filters for “short-term fun” or casual hookups, swiping right solely based on who looks the most appealing in a split second. We want the immediate “result” of physical intimacy or an ego boost, but we refuse to put in the “labor” of genuine emotional vulnerability. On these apps, people become experiences to consume.

When we view friendship through this same utilitarian lens, we stop seeing people and we start seeing networks. A dinner with a friend isn’t just a dinner, but “maintaining a connection.” A hobby isn’t just for fun, but a “side hustle” or a “talking point for interviews.”

This mindset of seeking constant benefit is exhausting. We are terrified that if we stop moving and producing “utility,” we will sink. We fear that an hour spent doing nothing is an hour lost forever.

I caught myself doing this recently. As I considered joining a new organization, my first thought wasn’t, “Will I enjoy this?” but rather, “How does this fit into my five-year plan?” There I was, checking the invisible ledger.

But the Utilitarian philosophers might have missed something. Or, maybe, we are misinterpreting them.

The most beautiful things in life often have zero ROI. There is no measurable utility in watching the sunset from the Nature Preserve. There is no resume line for sitting in the Marketplace for three hours talking to a friend about nothing and everything. There is no GPA boost for helping a stranger who dropped their books.

According to the invisible ledger, these moments are a waste of time because they generate no capital or immediate “result.” But if we look closer, these are the only moments that actually make us human.

If we live strictly by the equation of labor to benefit to result, we might end up with a perfect resume, but an empty life. We might achieve the “result” of a high-paying job, but lose the “benefit” of knowing who we actually are outside of our productivity.

Sometimes, the long-term “result” of an action isn’t visible today. Maybe the benefit of that long conversation with a friend won’t show up until years later, when you need support and they are there for you. Maybe the “utility” of a quiet walk is just that it keeps you sane.

I am not saying we should abandon our goals. Of course, as students, we care about grades and careers. But we need to recognize when the ledger is taking over.

So, here is my proposal for the week: do something useless. Read a book that has nothing to do with your major. Sit on the Spine and watch people pass by without checking your phone. Talk to someone who can offer you absolutely nothing in terms of career advancement.

Ignore the invisible ledger for an hour. Because ironically, the moments that don’t “count” are usually the ones that count the most.

Omer Mungan is a sophomore majoring in philosophy, politics and law. 

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