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

by Celeste Headlee

Improvement is healthy, but not every moment of your day should be leveraged in an attempt to make you a better person. If you’re searching for the fastest way to learn guitar because you also have to squeeze in yoga and keto cooking recipes and homemade charcoal facial peels, you have left no time to simply be the person you are. You are leaving no space for rest and contentment.

We now live in a culture in which we are not happy being and only satisfied when we’re doing.

Many of us become obsessed with means goals and completely lose sight of the more important end goal that should motivate all our efforts: living a good life. Why sacrifice your mental and physical health for something that may not help you and, in fact, takes you further from your ultimate ambition?

We try to force innovation in much the same way that we try to manufacture creativity.

Human beings have a great capacity for joy. I would love to see us make joy a goal.