Hannah Pratt's Key Ideas from Do Nothing: How to Break Away from Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving
by Celeste Headlee

We have not all worked as hard as we do today. Even peasant farmers spent fewer hours and they still had more holiday leave than the typical industrial worker! 

In the stage of the Industrial Revolution, though, changes occurred. Factory operators began to pay salaries per hour instead of paying staff per assignment. This led to a drastic rise in the number of hours that persons were forced to work.

The consequence of contaminated time is that many individuals never feel at ease. And one of the key disadvantages of new, flexible working hours is this. 

Back when we worked every day from 9 to 5, it was easy to realize when the job finished and our leisure time started. These two realms are much more likely to converge now that our hours are “flexible.”

There are many negative sides of contaminated time. Our imagination and competitiveness are improved by a genuine break from work and can also improve the immune system.

Things have been very simple so far. We also explored the roots of the productivity cult and examined some of how jobs can “contaminate” our time off and compete with our pleasure.

One of the most significant points about the rise towards productivity is that it left its roots in the office quite rapidly and became an approach towards life in general.

• The notion of enjoying “quality time” with family is one way that we can track the penetration of productivity into our personal lives. 
• There is nothing unusual about having to spend time with loved ones; it is always a satisfying remedy to our normal emphasis on “getting things done.” 
• But the idea of quality time suggests that in a few satisfying, condensed, yet unforgettable hours we can and should pack our family responsibilities.
• Bonding time, in other terms, is family life tailored to a philosophy of success, a mentality only limited to the office.

The overwhelming majority of individuals lived in rural, close-knit neighbourhoods until the Industrial Revolution attracted workers to big cities. People wanted a limited number of close friends, a smaller community of close companions, and a wider network of familiar associates.

Sadly, much of our social needs go unfulfilled these days. The interpersonal bonds of a warm, real-world group can not be replaced by getting hundreds of “friends” on Facebook.

in our search to make our lives more successful, we have lost a lot of human connection, a reality with unignorable repercussions.

The urge to outshine others, if we are not cautious, will find us engaged in a constant competition to be the most successful and efficient individual on the internet. Pointless to mention, this is a fight that we will never win. 

Comparing ourselves with those around us is human nature. It is doubtful that this fact would change any time soon, and it did not arise in the social media era.

Much the same, the laws of the game have been fundamentally modified by social media.

If we follow top tier celebrities, some glorified by paid media, we unconsciously convince ourselves that we are not great enough as we associate ourselves with hugely popular outliers like these and that the lives we live are grossly insufficient. 

Learn to base your assessments on yourself, without caring about someone else and what they may have achieved.

One of the very few challenges we can address by simply doing little is our single-minded emphasis on competitiveness. Although as simple as it is, what we need to prepare actively is to do nothing.

In addressing our emphasis on performance, the first thing we need to address is that many of us have no clue where our time goes.

Our judgment and empathy can be impeded by thinking that we are overstressed, whether or not we work long hours.

To enhance your time perception, begin by maintaining a list of your tasks. Log all down, even though it’s just social media surfing. 

When you have a good vision of how you are spending your time, build a plan that outlines how you would like to look at your days. Note, this is a timeline that promotes recreation, not efficiency. To encourage yourself to be completely lazy and inefficient, set aside a bunch of time each day.

One of the challenges of celebrating success and performance is that these ideals can allow us to lose track of the bigger picture. Not only does a society that emphasizes hard work and busyness convince us to ignore free time; it also allows us to rely on means rather than ends. 

Focusing on how much we get accomplished, to be more specific, might cause us to forget what we get accomplished. Most of us are so nervous about ticking boxes that we have avoided wondering if the stuff we’re doing makes us happy.

Examine the “productive” things you do and make sure that they bring you closer to your long-term goals in life. Is looking at emails on a Sunday morning helping you achieve the things you want in life? If not, forget about it.

Once you learn to drop unrewarding tasks, you’ll find you have much more time for leisure.