“Nothing is harder to do than nothing. In a world where our productivity determines our value, many of us find our every last minute captured, optimized, or appropriated as a financial resource by the technologies we use daily.” – Jenny Odell.
“… much of what gives one’s life meaning stems from accidents, interruptions, and serendipitous encounters: the “off time” that a mechanistic view of experience seeks to eliminate.” – Jenny Odell.
I’ve spent years hashing, hashing, and rehashing productivity techniques. This week, I intend to do the opposite.
The ability to do nothing may be the most critical skill you cultivate. And full disclosure: doing nothing is what I find most challenging.
As a committed devotee to timeboxing, I fill all my waking hours with tasks. Even this morning, as I used a spare five minutes on the bus to draft this Substack, I could have chosen to do something considered “unproductive,” like looking out the window.
It was a sunny morning, one of the first sunny days of the spring. I had only ten minutes left before I would reach the office. But I used my time to continue reading my novel and to draft this Substack instead of enjoying the sunshine. I made a grievous error in doing so.
I’ve already written about the importance of creating space in an attention-driven economy where people spend their entire days scrolling, scrolling, and scrolling an infinite internet to keep themselves occupied.
This past week, this excellent article by Ted Gioia, has made the rounds here in Finland.
Jenny Odell wrote an entire book about this subject in 2019. How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy ended up on my reading list after President Obama praised it as one of his favorite books of the year. I finally read it this past week. I guess I was waiting for a period when I had nothing to do or when doing nothing became the most important thing on my list.
Here’s a terrific review by Christine Sweeney: Book Review: How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell.
In the interest of doing nothing, I will cut this short. I’m not going to write anymore. We’re at the end of this essay. Finito. Bye-bye.
Spend time with a real person. Look out the window. Have a cup of tea. Stop and smell the flowers, as they say. It’s an adage, but it is one most people these days seem to have forgotten. It’s time to remember it. These things give meaning to our lives, not the crossing off every item on our to-do list. Remember. You will die with things left to do.
Here are a few tips on other ways you can do nothing:
1. Breathe in for a count of 4, hold for a count of 4, breathe out for a count of 4, hold, repeat.
2. Sit on your deck or porch with a cup of tea or coffee, and don’t do anything else.
3. Take note of each of your five senses one after another. What do you see? What do you hear? What do you smell, feel, taste?
4. While eating, instead of reading, watching TV, or looking at your phone, savor each bite and pay attention to taste, texture, temperature, etc.
5. Don’t take a newspaper (remember those?), book or phone when you go to the toilet.
6. Don’t look at your phone while waiting for the bus or in any line. Just look around and observe your surroundings.
7. Sit somewhere and don’t do anything. Eyes open or closed.
8. Take up bird watching. (Odell says because of the nature of this hobby, it should more accurately be called “bird waiting.”)
Be well.