Free time. This pleasant but elusive thing has affected my life in very serious ways. There is a lot of pressure in modern America to accomplish many, many things as fast as possible, and down-time or free-time is often lost, or looked upon 
as a waste. College life has reinforced this view of free-time, and I have found less than ever before since arriving here at Penn State. However, I must ask myself the question, is this change for the better? In my paradigm shift analysis, I will examine the benefits and costs of free-time, and how world perspectives on it have changed over the course of recorded human history, with a particular focus on the last 100 years beginning with the Industrial Revolution and the shift to the hourly wage.
There has never been a more critical time to examine the value and meaning of time. We live in an age of great technological accomplishment. We can accomplish using at a dramatically faster rate than we could in the past. Many chores are automated for us. Computers have made available massive amounts of information with little effort. All of the signs suggest that, if anything, we should have more free time now than ever before in human history! But it is clear that the opposite is true. People seem to view time not spent accomplishing a task as time wasted. I myself often laugh off concepts such as mediation, or rest during the day.
I have decided to research this topic because it is important to help people maximize their potential in life. With very little research, I have already discovered that many extremely successful athletes, businesspeople, and scientists have strong ideas about free-time, or down-time. These people are leaders in the world, and their ideas surely deserve some credit. The heart of my investigation will be whether it is beneficial to accomplish as much as possible, whether using up all of your time is the best way to do this, and uncovering the impact which free-time has on us. Is it possible that with a little more awareness of free-time, we might accomplish not many more things, but greater?
I really like your idea of free time for your paradigm shift essay. Our world now a days moves at a constant, fast-paced rate that often leaves us with little to no time to ourselves. I myself have been finding it very difficult to find free time in college and I think it is very essential to have that time to just relax and clam your mind. It will be interesting to see in your essay how the world has become so busy and against free time when the notion is also extremely important for our well being. I would love to know when it became so common to never to fill up every waking hour with activities. Good luck on your essay!