“There is a wealth of historical data that suggest we prefer a balance of leisure and toil. But we have been convinced through more than two hundred years of propaganda that inactivity is the same as laziness, and that leisure is a waste of time.”
My copy of Celeste Headlee’s book Do Nothing is so marked up, I think I highlighted every other sentence.
“Many people believe their lives, minds, and bodies can be hacked, tinkered with, and improved in a never ending search for peak productivity.”
I often believe - completely and truly - that whatever is next on my to-do list is something I should have already done. Whether it’s daily chores or one-off tasks, I can imagine a senario in which I woke up earlier, got ready for the day faster, and blasted through my tasks, after working out, of course.
And it’s not even a question of whether I get to rest - I do take time to rest, I am pretty clear about when I am out of steam - but its the grinding expectation that I am not living up to my own potential that exhausts me. It wears my mental batteries down so quickly. Because if I fed the sheep earlier I could have started homeschool activities with my kids earlier, and then I would have had more time before lunch to work on… well, so many things.
Headlee writes about the “danger of making efficiency a goal in and of itself.” Because then we can become so consumed with “doing things more quickly that we lose dight of what actually being accomplished.”
When I chide myself for being slower than I think I should be, I assume that these so called delays are worthless, when they are often extra snuggle time on the couch with my kids, a supportive text conversation with my friend, or dealing with a problem that crops up unexpectedly. Is it so bad? The thing that really gets me is that I believe that if I got done faster, I could write more or work on my stitched artworks more - like, inefficiency is holding me back, which also assumes that I should be devoting more time to my hobbies and passions because - get this - in this senario, I am also ‘behind’ on those.
Maria Popova told the BBC: The most pernicious thing [is] this tendency we have to apply productivity to realms of life that should by their very nature, be devoid of that criterion”
Celeste Headlee's Do Nothing: How to Break Away from Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving
