Why are we so busy?
It’s alright to do nothing
Spring is here — unless you’re in the Prairies— and like many of you, I’ve made a Spring To-Do list. Wash the windows, start growing things, and put away those winter clothes with fingers crossed that the weather gets warmer and you won’t have to take them out again until November. We make a list in the hopes that the longer days of sunshine will spark our motivation. After all, successful people stay motivated and get *@#$% done!
In this “be productive” age we’re living in, we’re told we’re not successful if we’re not producing something. Side hustles have become the norm and start-ups emerge out of projects that people worked on when they weren’t at their day job. We’re always available if someone needs us, even at the expense of our own free time. Being productive makes us happy. The more productive we are, the happier we feel.
But what if we stopped trying to be busy? Could doing nothing bring us happiness just as much as accomplishing a busy goal?
It’s awfully hard work doing nothing ~ Oscar Wilde
Why being bored is good for us
I confess. I’m a doer, always looking for the next thing to accomplish. It gives me a sense of purpose. I used to make a lot of lists — lists on my fridge, lists on my phone, and lists on my laptop.
An HBR article says that making to-do lists set us up for failure. It’s certainly been true for me. I would look at everything I had to do and feel defeated. They became reminders that I wasn’t meeting my commitments, even if they were only to myself. It wasn’t the way I wanted to feel. Being busy was exhausting. Like the country music legend Waylon Jennings sang, I wanted the world to stop and let me off because I was tired of goin’ round and round.
Stop doing all the things
It’s really hard to slow down, especially if you’re wired to be busy. Aaron Blum writes that busyness is a trap and the way to avoid it is to do the opposite.
Perhaps you’ve heard about the experiment that was conducted on people left alone in a room with the choice to sit quietly with their thoughts or push a button that would give them an electric shock. An overwhelming 67% of men and 25% of women chose to shock themselves rather than do nothing.
My mother is 86. I call her quite regularly. In our conversations, she rattles off what she’s done that day — a load of laundry, hung the sheets outside on the line and went into town to shop for groceries — and more often than not she ends with “ Oh, I felt so lazy.”
Being idle has long been viewed as a negative thing. Lord Chesterfield, in the 16th century, advised his son to never put off tomorrow what he could do today. After all, idleness is the devil’s playground. It’s no wonder we feel guilty when we aren’t filling our days with activities!
Become a daydreamer
By giving ourselves time to daydream, we can actually solve problems. Psychiatrist Eugenio Rothe from the Florida International University states that daydreaming can “account for creativity, insights of wisdom and oftentimes the solutions to problems that the person had not considered.”
Jeffrey Davis M.A. tells us we can exercise our daydreaming muscles by doing activities that are non-productive or not work-related.
I remember as a child that if I said I was bored around my parents, they would soon find some chore for me to do. I learned to occupy my own time. I discovered a wonderful world by laying on the front lawn watching the clouds.
Alone with our thoughts
When you live on your own, with fewer obligations, it can be daunting to have long periods of unplanned time. I had to learn to be alone.
In this SCL Health blog post on the benefits of doing nothing, being alone with our thoughts can get us outside our heads, and begin to think more about others. This is the focus of practicing mindfulness, steering our thoughts toward a larger perspective on life.
I’m discovering the pleasure of doing something without an outcome. I’ve been experimenting with sitting still and looking out my balcony window for five minutes at a time. Not reading, not checking my emails, but just sitting and doing nothing. It doesn’t seem like much but I’m starting to notice that it’s working on quieting my mind.
So this week, I invite you to spend some time looking up at the clouds. In the words of the Cloud Appreciation Society Manifesto “ believe that clouds are for dreamers and their contemplation benefits the soul.”
Dawn Jardine is a 60-something-writer who is committed to sharing how women can flourish as they age.
