Psychologist Steve Taylor recalls watching tourist in the British Museum in London who weren't really looking at the Rosetta Stone...on display in front of them , so much as preparing to look at it later, by recording images and videos on their phones. So intently were they focusing on using their time for a future benefit - for the ability to revisit or share the experience later on - that they were barely experiencing the exhibition itself at all. Of course, grumbling about young peoples smartphone habits is a favourite pastime of middle aged curmudgeons like Taylor and me. But his deeper point is that we are all frequently guilty of something similar. We treat everything we're doing - life itself in other words - as valuable only insofar as it lays the groundwork for something else.

from the always interesting Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks: Time and How to LIve it