Am I the only one thinking this urge to optimize our time is just anxiety? I'd argue not spending time worried about time usage would make one use better its time.

I'm not referring to the article per se, but to this kind of articles in general.

On this article: why school is considered not discretionary time? Also commute and meals are somewhat discarded. While cooking, or helping, read a poem or a short story; while commuting, read a book, listed to some good music. This way, discretionary time becomes 100%.

We're raised to be productive little machines. There comes a point in most people's careers where they ask themselves "is this it?" We're in a crowd of relatively wealthy people who actually gets to act on those questions.

It's also hard to live in the moment and enjoy those times if you're always working towards something else. Recently I have taken to visiting random neighbourhoods with no plans and nothing on my schedule. I was ashamed to discover places I'd passed a hundred times, beautiful streets just one block away from the main arteries.

> why school is considered not discretionary time?

Because most schools are so underfunded that, in practice, they are prisons with a food quality to match instead of providers of an environment conductive to good learning outcomes. State obviously varies by country a bit, but it's painfully obvious that schools (and their precursors daycare and kindergarten) primarily serve to enable women to join the workforce.