Do Nothing: Like Your Life Depends On It

Since I quit my job in May, I’ve been very interested in figuring out how to fill my time so I can maximize fulfillment, instead of productivity. So, it’s no wonder that I was attracted to a book called Do Nothing: How to Break Away from Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving by Celeste Headlee. It’s one of the few books I’ve given a five star review to this year on Goodreads. Why? Because Do Nothing gives you permission and reasons to slow down. It discusses why being intentional about how we spend our time is perhaps a better way to live life. Let’s look at some of the specific gems I took away from the book.

Stop Defending the Status Quo

The status quo in our society is to rush, rush, rush and be busy all of the time. We brag about being busy like it’s a badge of honor. In reality, our busyness leads to health issues and leaves little room for what we really enjoy. We are all living life on auto-pilot. But, why? We’re used to the status quo. We’ve been sold the idea of the rags to riches story. From a very young age we’ve always been told, “if you work really hard, then you will succeed and be happy”.

It turns out, that’s not usually the case. You may succeed, if by succeed you mean make a lot of money, but you might not. And, it turns out money doesn’t equal happiness. It can only fulfill some of our needs, but not all of them. So, that begs the question: what do we really need?

The New List of Human Needs

We’ve always known that we need food, water and shelter to survive. Now Headlee adds three more items to the list: sleep, human connection, and novelty. In our frenzied lives, we typically lose out on sleep and human connection. Rest is necessary to function properly on a day-to-day basis, but belonging is also a fundamental human need. Depending on the careers we’ve chosen, we might be missing out on novelty as well. Novelty is learning, growing, and feeling like you’re making a difference somewhere. Headlee says that if we live without rest, relationships, and novelty we start to run into mental and physical health issues, just as we would if we didn’t have food, water, and shelter. She argues that we need to focus on the new list of human needs to live a more fulfilled life.

How Have Humans Worked Historically?

Over the past centuries, scholars have found that humans participate in periods of intense work and then intense rest. Think about a farmer’s life where they might be very busy during harvest time and then have several months to rest before the growing season comes around again. Or think of a professor working for a few years, then taking a sabbatical. These rest periods might be months, years, or hours. If you look at the schedules of history’s most “productive” people, like Benjamin Franklin, Charles Darwin, and even modern day top violinists, you find that they typically work hard 3-4 hours a day, then spend the rest of their time walking, reading, or socializing with friends. This is a far cry from the 8+ hours we Americans spend working each day and I bet most of us don’t feel quite as productive as Benjamin Franklin.

Action Steps You Can Take

In Do Nothing, Headlee gives us a number of very concrete action steps we can take to better embrace rest. I’ll share a few of my favorites here.

Evaluate Your Schedule, then Make a Better One

First, take notes for a few weeks about how you spend your time. Keep a journal of your findings, then evaluate it to see what you’d like to change. Then, she recommends making a new schedule. You might have a couple schedules for different types of days. She’s got a “gym day schedule” and a “non-gym day schedule”. You might have a “weekday schedule” and a “weekend schedule”. The idea is that we use the data we gleaned from our current schedule evaluation to update our days to more align with the ways we’d like to spend our time. You can, of course, build flexibility into your schedule, and probably should. But, at least you are starting out with a very conscious representation of how you’d like your best days to go. Knowing your ideal schedule is the first major step towards living it.

Focus When You Work

Research has found that we’re most productive when we work in 50-60 minute increments and then take around a 17-minute break. Turn off your cell phone and other interrupting applications like slack, email notifications, etc. You’ll work 40% faster without distractions and have fewer errors.

Take Your Days Off

Headlee, who is a writer and runs her own business, has a lot of flexibility in how she works. She noticed that when we tried out several schedules, she ultimately needed at least two full days off per week and appreciated one full day without email or social media.

I am particularly interested in trying the latter idea. Just this morning, I forgot to take my phone out of my purse after the gym and enjoyed a leisurely two hours not really worrying about much besides my own internal list of things I wanted to do. So, instead of trying to answer emails, text messages, or dive into my to do list right away. I sat on the couch with my husband and read for about an hour and a half. It was lovely. When I finally picked my phone up, I was reminded of a few things I should be doing and my stress levels shot way up.

Tiffany Shlain has a great book called 24/6: Giving Up Screens One Day a Week to Gain More Time, Creativity, and Connection, about carving out one day a week without technology. It’s tough to do this for an entire day (I’ve tried!) but my experience this morning proves that even a couple of hours without technology can be a real boon for you mental health. I still feel more calm and happier because I left my phone out of sight this morning.

Talk to People In Person

There is really no comparison between the uplift we get from being social in-person and the one we may or may not receive online. You can’t replace in-person connection – our evolutionary biology has just not caught up to the reality of social media yet. Headlee recommends being more purposeful with our small talk by engaging the barista at Starbucks, having a quick conversation with a co-worker, and walking upstairs to talk to your teenager instead of texting them from the kitchen.

Help Others

We also feel better after helping someone else. Whether we’re helping our kids with homework, a co-worker with an assignment, volunteering with our favorite non-profit, or paying for a stranger’s order. We get a lot out of helping others and it’s worth it to go out of our way to do some sort of selfless act every single day.

Stop Comparing Yourself to Others

And, finally, stop comparing yourself to others. The internet widens our world in ways that are both wonderful and terrible. While we used to compare ourselves to only our neighbors, we now compare ourselves to everyone in the entire world, including supermodels, successful CEOs, and other celebrities. We can’t help but compare ourselves to the people around us, it’s part of human nature. And it’s pretty hard to be the best of the best in a world filled with 8 billion people.

So, we need to be mindful about not comparing ourselves to others. I’ve noticed that once I broke free from the typical full-time workday, it’s hard to stop feeling like I’m not productive enough. To combat this, just remember that you’re the badass here. You created a schedule that you’re happy with because it fulfills you more than the hustle and bustle culture that everyone else is infected with. It’s ok to be different. It’s good to be different. And it’s certainly ok to sit around and do nothing. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.