Do Nothing: How to Break Away from Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving

by Celeste Headlee

Sadly, two things occurred that prevented a drop in working hours: a rise in consumerism and a steep rise in income inequality.

having no free time is an indication of how hard you’re working, and hard work garners nearly immediate respect.

The glorification of consumerism creates a vicious cycle. We work longer and longer hours in order to buy products that we think will make our lives better, we stop enjoying them fairly quickly, the products themselves require time and maintenance that cut into our free time, this makes us unhappy, so we decide to relieve our feelings of sadness with a new product. Rinse and repeat.

Speed and efficiency are, by their nature, antithetical to introspection and intimacy. The kind of social consciousness required to get to know another person intimately and to understand the emotional landscape of a community requires time and focus, two things most people don’t think they have. But time and focus are essential in our relationships.

What we do is not work on two things at once but rapidly switch from one task to another. That’s our form of “multitasking.”

Switching back and forth is not efficient. The more complex the task we are switching to, the longer it takes our brain to adjust. The accumulated cost can be so high that the American Psychological Association recommends that we “choose strategies that boost [our brain’s] efficiency—above all, by avoiding multitasking, especially with complex tasks.”

We now live in a culture in which we are not happy being and only satisfied when we’re doing. Maintaining that kind of guiding principle has unintended consequences. For one thing, it makes us less compassionate.

Idleness is really time in which one is not actively pursuing a profitable goal. It means you are at leisure. There is considerable scientific research demonstrating that idleness is good for you. There is even a good deal of clinical study that suggests idleness is associated with high intelligence.

Focus is required for directed work, but idleness is necessary for reflection. Since reflective thought is one of the most uniquely human activities in which we engage, one of the abilities that separates us from our simian cousins, it’s not much of a stretch to say that idleness helps make us more human.

These are the essential qualities of a human being: social skills and language, a need to belong that fosters empathy, rule-making, music, and play. We excel at these things, and we need them in order to be healthy.

human beings are at their best when they are social, and human minds work best in connection with other human minds. It may not be the most efficient way to live, but it’s the most likely to foster well-being.

Increase time perception. Create your ideal schedule. Stop comparing at a distance. Work fewer hours. Schedule leisure. Schedule social time. Work in teams. Commit small, selfless acts. Focus on ends, not means.