You're not wasting your time. You're choosing to spend it on one sort of gameplay, which fulfills one sort of desire/need/goal, rather than others which have more concrete (but still ultimately virtual) rewards. But you're obviously enjoying it, or you wouldn't keep doing it.
The problem, IMO, is not that you're not getting xp, it's that some part of your thought process defines activities that don't earn you xp as "a waste". That's clearly not the case, and that's the part I advise you to work on. Since that's something internal, it's something only you can change.