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.

Differentiate Between Means And Ends To Reclaim Our Free Time

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.

A Few Basic Adjustments To Decelerate And Enhance Our Standard Of Life

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.

Check Where Your Time Goes

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.

We May Be Robbed Of Real Interpersonal Relations

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.

Following Elon Musk or The Kardashians

If your to-do lists seem to be getting longer every day, you are trying to optimize your hours, and hoping to find extra hours in the day somehow, you may have fallen victim to the “cult of effectiveness.”  This is a mentality that assumes that the busier we are the better. And while this movement has never been more dominant than it is right now, it didn’t evolve instantly.

The Never-ending Marathon

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.

We Aim For Productivity In Our Private Relationships

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.

History Is Embedded In Our Current Obsession With Competitiveness

Our fascination with productivity is making us depressed, stressed out, and physically ill.
For ages, as if high productivity were what truly counts in life, we have followed ever-increasing milestones. In the end, we just managed to make ourselves sad.

The Cult Of Productivity

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.

Social Media Makes Comparisons Easy

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.

How To Do Nothing

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.

Contaminated Time: Never Being At Ease

<ul><li>The notion of enjoying “quality time” with family is one way that we can track the penetration of productivity into our personal lives. </li><li>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.” </li><li>But the idea of quality time suggests that in a few satisfying, condensed, yet unforgettable hours we can and should pack our family responsibilities.</li><li>Bonding time, in other terms, is family life tailored to a philosophy of success, a mentality only limited to the office.</li></ul>

Spending Quality Time Means It is Limited By Nature

Oddly, our fascination with changing our lives has made us more lonely, unhealthier, and anxious than ever before. The remedy to this state of affairs is easy: make time in your life for genuine pleasure and just do nothing.

“A welcome antidote to our toxic hustle culture of burnout.”—Arianna Huffington “This book is so important and could truly save lives.”—Elizabeth Gilbert “A clarion call to work smarter [and] accomplish more by doing less.”—Adam Grant We work feverishly to make ourselves happy. So why are we so miserable? Despite our constant search for new ways to optimize our bodies and minds for peak performance, human beings are working more instead of less, living harder not smarter, and becoming more lonely and anxious. We strive for the absolute best in every aspect of our lives, ignoring what we do well naturally and reaching for a bar that keeps rising higher and higher. Why do we measure our time in terms of efficiency instead of meaning? Why can’t we just take a break? In Do Nothing, award-winning journalist Celeste Headlee illuminates a new path ahead, seeking to institute a global shift in our thinking so we can stop sabotaging our well-being, put work aside, and start living instead of doing. As it turns out, we’re searching for external solutions to an internal problem. We won’t find what we’re searching for in punishing diets, productivity apps, or the latest self-improvement schemes. Yet all is not lost—we just need to learn how to take time for ourselves, without agenda or profit, and redefine what is truly worthwhile. Pulling together threads from history, neuroscience, social science, and even paleontology, Headlee examines long-held assumptions about time use, idleness, hard work, and even our ultimate goals. Her research reveals that the habits we cling to are doing us harm; they developed recently in human history, which means they are habits that can, and must, be broken. It’s time to reverse the trend that’s making us all sadder, sicker, and less productive, and return to a way of life that allows us to thrive.

productivity

Productivity

career

Career

timemanagement

Time Management

books

Books

“A welcome antidote to our toxic hustle culture of burnout.”—Arianna Huffington “This book is so important and could truly save lives.”—Elizabeth Gilbert “A clarion call to work smarter [and] accomplish more by doing less.”—Adam Grant   We work feverishly to make ourselves happy. So why are we so miserable?   Despite our constant search for new ways to optimize our bodies and minds for peak performance, human beings are working more instead of less, living harder not smarter, and becoming more lonely and anxious. We strive for the absolute best in every aspect of our lives, ignoring what we do well naturally and reaching for a bar that keeps rising higher and higher. Why do we measure our time in terms of efficiency instead of meaning? Why can’t we just take a break?   In Do Nothing, award-winning journalist Celeste Headlee illuminates a new path ahead, seeking to institute a global shift in our thinking so we can stop sabotaging our well-being, put work aside, and start living instead of doing. As it turns out, we’re searching for external solutions to an internal problem. We won’t find what we’re searching for in punishing diets, productivity apps, or the latest self-improvement schemes. Yet all is not lost—we just need to learn how to take time for ourselves, without agenda or profit, and redefine what is truly worthwhile.   Pulling together threads from history, neuroscience, social science, and even paleontology, Headlee examines long-held assumptions about time use, idleness, hard work, and even our ultimate goals. Her research reveals that the habits we cling to are doing us harm; they developed recently in human history, which means they are habits that can, and must, be broken. It’s time to reverse the trend that’s making us all sadder, sicker, and less productive, and return to a way of life that allows us to thrive.

Celeste Headlee is an American radio journalist, author, public speaker, and co-host of the weekly series Retro Report on PBS. In her 20-year career in public radio, Headlee has served as the host of the Georgia Public Broadcasting program "On Second Thought" and co-host of the national morning news show The Takeaway.