Note from Brett: sorry for the inactivity for the past week, everyone. I managed my time and energy poorly and made a mistake in scheduling this post, which is why it’s running today instead of last Thursday. I couldn’t correct my mistake since I was out visiting the University of Pennsylvania and didn’t have a computer.
As much as I like to be productive, sometimes it’s productive to not be productive at all.
Our busy lives and all of our obligations threaten to swallow up every last second of free time that we have. If you’re not actively doing something, everyone preaches, you’re wasting time.
Sometimes the best thing to do when you have a free moment (or a thousand) is to do nothing at all. To pause and reflect about the direction your life is headed. To take a deep breath. To relish the feeling of being alive.
Keeping Your Head Down and Never Changing Course = Zombie
Our system of working – and living – has made it so we spend all our time doing things. We are always doing an activity, whether it’s sleeping, eating, driving, working, reading, or watching TV. We’re always doing.
When you’re busy occupying yourself with too much “doing”, there’s no time to just “be”. “Being time” is when you sit and reflect on what’s going on in your life – where you can take the time to actually think about those things you spend all of your waking hours doing. You won’t be able to change anything that you’re doing if you’re so preoccupied that you can’t even think; just allowing yourself to be and assess where you’re going in your life can save you hours of mindless drudgery.
Imagine if, while you’re sitting there, thinking about things, that you discover a new or novel idea that will fundamentally change the way you work. Maybe it’s a realization about how to approach a particularly difficult project or problem that you’re facing. Maybe it’s a way to make yourself more efficient because you’ve identified a major distraction that disturbs you all the time when you’re working. Maybe it’s just realizing how grateful you are to live the life you lead, and you end up changing the way you live for the rest of your life.
All of those are the benefits – none too farfetched – of giving yourself time to just be. Scheduling in a period of time where your object is to do nothing allows you to pick your head up from the grindstone and ask yourself, “Why am I doing this? Am I getting what I want out of my life right now?”
If the answer’s yes, you’ll get back to work.
If the answer’s no, you’ll probe further, examining your work, relationships, health, and everything in-between. That kind of self-examination is what you need in order to catalyze personal change and/or improvement.
However, it’s up to you to stop working and take a look around once in a while. Even if you’re not hell-bent on changing your life because you’re satisfied with yourself, life’s a lot sweeter when you take the time to smell the roses. Trust me – I’m feeling the impermanence of my own life now that I’m officially an adult, and all the days that I thought would never come have already passed me by.
I agree completely with your post. We live in a connected, always-on world where hyper-productivity is the goal. This means that for the ambitious, we are forced to work longer, harder, and with fewer breaks. It’s no revelation that the lines between work and personal life have blurred and there will never be a distinct separation again. But as you point out, we must stop and have some reflection time, because that is where the novel ideas come from. Furthermore it gives the mind time to rest, regroup, and sort out all of the noise in our life. You can trace through history many of our greatest producers and thinkers that have swore by their quiet time with their Inner Self.
Even if you don’t get that burst of insight during a quite reflection time, you still plant the seed for the subconscious to be finding a solution while we’re off busy trying to be competitive in this globalized economy. Lastly I would say that it doesn’t have to be some formal ceremony. You can reflect while driving in the car silently, washing the dishes, or going for a walk during lunch break etc. How and where doesn’t matter as much, so long as you are carving out the time to actually do it. Great post, thanks for the reminder.
Cheers,
Kwan
HI Brett, I had a lot of time like this in Thailand. I had a lot of things to work out, and needed to just come to a place of stillness. So I lay in my hammock for days on end, not feeling guilty for doing nothing. Just being. In that time so many answers came to me, and I was able to find solutions and inspiration.
Silence and stillness can be golden. We live in such a fast paced world, that if we don’t make an active decision to slow down we can burn ourselves right out of energy and ideas. I enjoyed your post. Stacey
i faced this problem at one point in my life, great post brett, so true
Thanks for writing this! I struggle with feeling guilty when I’m not being “productive”. But I try to remind myself that I can’t be productive 24/7 without taking time to rest, and that just being in the moment is so important. Taking time to just BE is a great tool for brainstorming & letting your brain process all the information it receives.