By Aruna Sankaranarayanan,
As a different year approaches, we are tempted to use this temporal marker to have an effect on modify in our lives. We update our To-do lists, resolve to alter our habits, undertake new ventures or renew our relationships. A want to strengthen ourselves is the foundational impetus that drives these behaviours. Whether we want to be more productive at work, or more common at the fitness center or a more caring companion, we are motivated to progress or move forward. Conditioned from childhood to rely on metrics to exhibit our development or onward momentum, we continue to evaluate our lives by the quantity of income we make, the aggregate worth of offers we sign, the quantity of calories we drop or the size of our social networks.
A capitalist view of productivity not only dictates our work lives, but seeps into our leisure hours as properly. We count the quantity of actions we take and post photographs of cakes we bake, hoping they garner adequate Likes. By measuring and evaluating, we think we can project our progress and steer our successes across varied domains. Though the pandemic has a punctured a hole in our sense of handle more than our destinies, we continue to strategy, assess and strive to strengthen our lives, each individual and qualified. While possessing objectives and a sense of goal are linked to our general well-being, we have to have to pause and ask whether or not we have to have to account for each moment, assess each aspect of our lives and accomplish all the time. In other words, does productivity have to be the driving force that impels each action or each second?
In an short article in Harvard Business Review, ideal-promoting author Peter Bregman urges us to resist this untiring quest for productivity by undertaking practically nothing, for at least some time. He exhorts us to embrace ‘willingness’ as opposed to ‘willfulness’. Instead of assuming handle more than each second of our day, we may possibly just give into the present devoid of attempting to accomplish something. Rather than regimenting and directing each practical experience, probably, we can just let the present practical experience, whether or not it is sitting on a couch or strolling down a lane, to subsume us.
Doing practically nothing is tougher than it appears, in particular if you are a compulsive list-maker and an effective scheduler. If you are disciplined, driven and diligent, undertaking practically nothing can look like a herculean challenge as we inhabit a culture that tries to optimize each facet of life. In her thoughtful and believed-provoking book, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy, artist and writer, Jenny Odell urges us to query our utilitarian point of view on life and challenge our notions of productivity and progress. In reality, she even coaxes us to transcend our individualist conception of ourselves to encompass the ecosystem about us.
In today’s hurried, harried and hectic planet, time is a valuable resource. Given our paucity for time, we think that each minute has to be invested in some productive finish. The concept of undertaking practically nothing as a result shakes numerous of our basic assumptions which we take as truisms. However, if we make it a deliberate selection to disengage and disconnect from our wired planet, each actually and metaphorically, we may possibly learn that our sense of reality in fact expands as our senses develop into sharpened.
Odell reminds us that undertaking practically nothing does not engender passivity, lethargy or ennui. On the contrary, when we step off the productivity treadmill, we may possibly discover that we perceive the sights and sounds of the planet differently as we discover to see and listen with a renewed concentrate. In our hackneyed planet, taking a actual break ordinarily implies a modify of scene or place. But when we are on trip, our assumptions and worldviews travel with us. A accurate retreat entails a break from our entrenched notions of progress wherein we deliberately pick how we devote our days devoid of becoming sucked into the vortex of our digital devices.
Odell reminds us that when we start out paying consideration to how we spend consideration, we recognize the untapped breadth and variety of our attentional faculties. She likens consideration to breathing. Most of the time, we just inhale and exhale devoid of noticing the flow of air by way of our bodies. But if we pause to notice the breath, we recognize that act of breathing entails many levels. Deep, purposeful breathing is a vastly distinctive practical experience from the shallower, more speedy sort we typically engage in. Likewise, our consideration and perceptual skills also expand when we direct our concentrate in more deliberate and much less conditioned strategies.
As we come to the tail-finish of a tumultuous year on a panhuman scale, probably, we can reset and recalibrate our objectives to encompass undertaking practically nothing. This may, certainly, turn out to be a balm for not only for our tired souls but our depleted planet as properly.
The author is an avid blogger. Her forthcoming book will be released by Rupa Publications. Views expressed are the author’s personal.