29/03/2020
đđđ What are the multiple benefits of doing nothing?
Author and journalist Celeste Headlee dedicated her whole life to work. She assumed, as many of us do, that happiness was on the other side of a completed project or a better income. But instead, the rinse and repeat of her work life left her exhausted and sick. In other words, she had burnout.
Awakening to the problem of burnout, Headlee says, is just the first step toward resolving it. The second is to realize burnout isnât our own fault. Weâve been raised in a culture that champions hard work and efficiency at any costâeven when that cost is our own health and well-being. And the third is to reclaim idleness: the powerful and life-changing tool of doing nothing.
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Whatâs your case for wasting time?
I used to do all kinds of time-waste-y stuff as a kid, like change all the clothes on my dolls and switch them around over and over and over. Because that was hilarious and fun. It would take me forty-five minutes to take a bath because I didnât run out of stuff to do in there. And itâs funny because we look back at that behavior and say, âWell, thatâs what kids do.â But noâthatâs what humans do.
We start teaching kids to be busy and productive at a very young age now, especially in the US. We are so focused on guaranteeing that our kids are set up for success that they become walking resumes. And when we add activities and experiences to our kidsâ lives just to enhance their CVs, weâre really teaching them that idle time is a wasted opportunity, that free hours could be better spent improving themselves and their future college applications.
We just donât waste time as much anymore because itâs not rewarded. Itâs not something that measurably earns you money, or that produces something, or that you can post on Instagram. Our society doesnât value it. But taking it slow is so importantâfor your health, for creative thinking, and for being well.
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Whatâs the problem with our culture of busyness and optimization?
When youâre in a state of mind of all-the-time DEFCON one, meaning youâre hopped up on the stress hormone cortisol, your amygdala takes over. Thatâs the part of your brain that governs your fight-or-flight response. Thatâs what we call your monkey mind. And when the amygdala, which is reactive and instinctive, is in charge, weâre not using the part of our brain that considers choices carefullyâthe part thatâs rational, logical, and careful.
When youâre in a state of stress all the time, you start to become a very unhealthy decision-maker. Some of those bad decisions are about things like what to eat or how much sleep to get. You also tend to turtle in, meaning that you cut off social interactions, which is problematic because social interaction is incredibly healthyâand not just healthy but necessary to be healthy.
Burnout is shortening our lives. People who donât relax and slow down are more likely to have heart disease, diabetes, and all kinds of negative health indicators.
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How can we manage stress and anxiety during COVID-19, when we can't rely on our normal social interactions?
We are already experiencing various stages of loneliness and isolation, which makes it all the more crucial that people make sure they get authentic social contact every day while theyâre at home. The danger lies in thinking that interaction on Twitter or Facebook counts as authentic social contact. Digital interactions do not fulfill our innate need for belongingness, and they actually have a tendency to make people feel more lonely and more isolated. During quarantine, make sure you donât end the day without talking with someone else on the phone for social (not work) purposes or, better yet, use a teleconference platform like Skype or Facetime so you can see each otherâs faces as you chat. Invite your neighbors to a cocktail hour with six feet of distance between you. Call that relative that you havenât spoken to in months. Create a virtual book club using Zoom. Those interactions, even if they last ten minutes or less, will lift your mood, lower your stress, and help you cope with the anxiety of self-quarantine.
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Why do we perceive busyness as a virtue?
Something about our culture is causing burnout, the chronic feeling of exhaustion that is often work-related and extends for weeks or even months at a time. Even though burnout is so bad for so many of us, itâs also really hard to get away from. The first step is to stop performing itâto stop thinking that being a workaholic is something to take pride in.
Weâve been treating busyness like a badge of honor. And we work ourselves to the point that canceling plans is the best thing that could ever happen to us. It gets us to a point of performative busyness, which establishes and upholds that itâs a status symbol to not have time for things.
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What is the difference between idleness and laziness?
When we talk about idleness, weâre not talking about laziness. Weâre talking about the fact that a human being isnât a machine. Idleness is necessary rest.
Boredom lets your brain work. Even when youâre not doing anything at all, your brain is very rarely still: It is always working and thinking and muddling through things. Your brain needs idleness, in that sometimes it needs to be not directed at work or any other particular thing.
The research that we have on boredom shows that boredom is incredibly healthy and fertileâand even productive in itself. Our minds do incredibly creative things when we leave them alone. Thatâs the time when the brain is synthesizing all the information weâve taken in. Itâs paging through the card catalog, sifting through all the things that have happened over the past day or so. And it comes up with unexpected connections and unexpected ideas. Thatâs when youâre most creativeâbecause your brain doesnât want to be bored. It doesnât like it. So it starts wandering up and down the aisles of your thoughts and memories and looking at whateverâs around to look at.
But when was the last time you felt actually bored? Weâve largely eliminated boredom, and so weâve also started to eliminate that factor of creativity.
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Why do we feel such anxiety about not using our time for something productive?
Efficiency culture is so ingrained that itâs learned in many aspects of our lives. Our parents tell us not to waste time; TV and movies lionize people who work insane hours; ads are constantly selling us products to evaluate and improve every aspect of our lives. Itâs everywhere.
I have to believe that some of the anxiety we feel when weâre not being productive is due to the guilt we put on people over idleness. We have created the societal morality that the harder you work, the more deserving you are and the better a person you are. Theyâre unconnected. But thatâs where we live now: If weâre not producing and productive and efficient, then we feel like we donât deserve anything. And if something bad were to happen to you in your idleness, we have this idea that you deserve it because weâre lazy.
Thatâs the source of the anxiety we feel when weâre idle. And itâs not something real; itâs an idea weâve created. But itâs hard to shake.
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Why is it so hard to let go of optimization?
Partly because we canât reward what we canât measure. The number of hours we work is really easy to track, but itâs hard to track things like creativity and innovation. If you get an app thatâs supposed to up your water intake, itâs really easy to measure that. We feel accomplished when we show that for four days in a row, we drank more than however many ounces a day. It gives us this delusion of control over our lives. And it can be very, very scary to let those arbitrary measures of success go.
If weâre so focused on optimizing something and getting it all âright,â we often miss the pointâand we lose the benefits of idleness along the way.
