Do Nothing: Break Away from Overworking, Overdoing and Underliving

by Celeste Headlee

Trying to do several things at once instead of taking advantage of the brain’s natural inclination to pulse between focus and rest is a waste of fertile brainpower.

If you silence your phone, close your inbox, and really focus on getting a report done, research shows you’ll finish 40 percent faster, have fewer errors, and have plenty of time to take a short walk around the building and let your brain relax.

However much time you spend in focused work, when it’s time to get up and take a break, make sure you’re really resting your brain. Don’t text or do online shopping. Don’t direct your thoughts toward any task at all. Downtime is healthy for the mind, and it’s also an incredibly fertile neurological state. When you’re not directing your brain to do a specific task, your mind activates the default network. The default mode network, or DMN, becomes active when we allow our minds to wander. When the DMN is engaged, it works on our memories, putting past events into context and making moral evaluations about things that have happened. It also imagines the future, tries to understand the emotions of others, and reflects on our own emotions and decisions. The default network is crucial for empathy, for self-reflection, and for Theory of Mind, the ability to imagine what others may be thinking. Allowing our brains to switch into default mode is crucial for our well-being. That’s the source of much of our creativity and innovation, since the brain actively reshuffles the puzzle pieces of our memories and emotions when it’s not directed to solve a problem or complete a task. In practice, your brain will only switch to default mode if you allow it to ramble without purpose. It’s not idleness, since you could be jogging or wiping down counters during this time.

If you decide to call a loved one or friend during your break, resist the temptation to talk about work. Make a clean break. Certainly, don’t walk into your office kitchen and spend fifteen minutes talking to a coworker about the job. Take a breath and hit pause.

When you’re not at work, you can actually enjoy not just time off but true leisure. You can be completely detached from concerns about work, and you should strive to make a complete separation. I realize it feels necessary to answer emails and texts promptly, but that habit is incredibly hard on your body and mind.

Research shows employees who feel more detached from their jobs during their time at home are emotionally healthier and more satisfied with their lives. They’re less likely to feel emotionally exhausted, and they report getting better sleep.

As the economist Joseph Stiglitz says, we learn how to enjoy leisure “by enjoying leisure.”

Depending on which research you consult, the average adult spends two to six hours a day answering email and at least a third of that isn’t urgent.

I know it’s scary to lift your foot off the gas pedal, but trust me that you’ll enjoy the ride much more. You don’t need a special app or a guide from an expert to “hack your leisure time.” Sometimes striving to improve on everything we do can impede progress. Stop becoming and just be for a moment.

There’s even scientific evidence that shows watching cat videos is good for you.

A growing body of evidence suggests that quality leisure time, meaning leisure time that is truly disengaged from work concerns, will ultimately make you better at and more satisfied with your job.

Work is necessary and can be fulfilling when you feel a sense of purpose in what you do, but it is not the justification for your existence. Remember that we are not biologically and evolutionarily “born to work.” We are, however, designed to relate with other people and form intimate bonds with friends and family. While work is a tool used to gain other necessary things, belongingness is a fundamental need. That’s why it’s important to also set aside time to be social.

If you spend an hour or two on social media every night, set aside some of that time to meet someone for coffee or attend a concert. It’s possible you feel you don’t have the time or energy to do so, but that may be because you’re unknowingly wasting it online.

If you have only two hours’ worth of social energy each day, you can either spend that time arguing with someone on Facebook or hanging out with a friend.

The social psychologist Gillian Sandstrom is an expert in social interactions and conversations. She and Elizabeth Dunn ran an experiment in 2014 that found many people often avoid chats with grocery store clerks and baristas because they’re in a hurry. And yet, we enjoy a lot of benefits if we take a minute to strike up those conversations. “In the current study,” wrote Sandstrom and Dunn, “people who had a social interaction with a barista (i.e., smiled, made eye contact, and had a brief conversation) experienced a more positive effect than people who were as efficient as possible.”

People generally expect to hate talking with people in person and on the phone, but enjoy it when they’re forced to do it. That’s why it’s important that you force yourself to do it.

You may dread small talk, but study after study shows that those conversations make you healthier, happier, and more relaxed. The benefits of authentic social interaction are immediate and primal. Set aside some time to talk with friends or make sure that you make contact with strangers when you’re out and about.

In this day and age, it’s unlikely that other people will strike up a conversation with you on the elevator or the subway, so take the initiative and say good morning. As the behavioral scientist Nicholas Epley has said, few people wave, but almost everyone waves back.

Humans are so biologically primed to take benefit from social encounters that we get a bump to our mood and mental health even when a stranger simply makes eye contact and nods as they pass us on the street. Just that small gesture—a smile or a nod or a wave—helps you feel more connected to your community. Tha...

These brief interactions are no replacement for long-lasting relationships, of course, and will not truly fulfill your need for belongingness, but they will make you feel better and less stressed. They also may encourage you to invest more in either findin...

If you take away nothing else from this book, I hope you understand that 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...

socializing regularly can add as many years to your life as quitting smoking. Avoiding social contact is making us sicker, and seeking it out will make us healthier. It really is that simple.

We have evolved to think in groups and bounce ideas off others.

Analysis of data from diverse industries going back decades shows that even the most experienced expert reaches better conclusions when their recommendations are merged with the advice of less-knowledgeable people.

Brainstorming, or generating new ideas, is often best done alone, when people can focus in quiet. But the process of evaluating those ideas and choosing the b...

Study after study shows that groups of people outperform individuals on a wide range of tasks, from math to linguistic problems to business decisions. Groups of three to five students repeatedly outperformed even the ...

comfort is the enemy of innovation.

Again and again, we’ve seen that better decisions are made by polling all employees of an organization than by relying on the judgment of a CEO or one executive team.

The average of answers from a large, independent, and diverse group of people will often be more accurate than the answer arrived at by a smart individual or a small group of smart people.

The world can be a cruel place, so it might surprise you to know that science has proven, over and over, that humans are mostly kind.

Kindness is intuitive for the vast majority of us, and given the choice to treat people well or treat them badly, we generally choose the former. Goodwill is human and natural.

So, if you truly want to break free of the obsession with efficiency, practice random acts of kindness.

years of research proves that doing nice things for other people, even small things, is incredibly good for you.

Humans are biologically incentivized to be kind to each other, and we’re rewarded by our bodies when we do it. Committing a selfless act triggers a release of endorphins, the neurotransmitters that help block feelings of pain and even create a euphoric sensation. Altruism can produce the same elation as vigorous exercise, an effect that’s sometimes called the “helper’s high.”

focusing on someone else’s needs helps to distract you from what’s going wrong in your own life. As long as what you do for another is not so difficult or time-consuming that it becomes overwhelming, a random act of kindness can be healing during times of stress.