Take Time to Do Nothing

I’m taking my own advice. The pressure to use our newfound free time is absurd. Also, as someone now without childcare who is working remotely full time (and my job is significantly impacted because a majority of it is face-to-face teaching that is now online), I don’t have more free time. In some ways I have even less.

But it’s true that time itself is different. Our entire way of life is upended, and of course ways we structure time are changing. Try to relax into that. To truly be our “best selves,” we need to process and adjust and develop our long-term perspectives. Overwhelming productivity is actually going to slow down that process.

For a related take on this, check out Rachel Charlene Lewis’s “All the ways the internet is pushing hustle culture during the quarantine.”

Efficiency vs Savoring Transitions

Efficiency experts tend to ignore transitions. The reality is that one doesn’t toggle instantly from being asleep to being at work, even if work is the kitchen table mere steps away. An efficient good morning looks like this:

1. 5:30 am wake up (efficient people get up really early)

2. 5:31 brush teeth and throw on workout gear (efficient people work out early on the morning)

3. 5:30 (running or yoga)

4. 6:30 (great workout! Showering now)

5. 6:40 (get dressed and have breakfast)

6. 6:50 (hard at work, or at least on your commute and doing something productive)

An actual good morning is literally over an hour of transitions. Getting out of bed. Checking the weather: there are a few raindrops clinging to the window, but it’s not raining now. Making coffee. Staring at the wall wondering about painting it a different color. Reading parts of several newspaper articles. 

This is all significant transition work. One doesn’t simply become awake. One spends some time trying to come to terms with the fact of the day ahead. Getting a grip on reality. 

Even if you’re a morning exerciser who thrives on rushing through this significant transition, there are other transitions throughout a day, and they deserve to be taken seriously, savored, rather than being eliminated in the name of getting things done. 

The transition is the liminal space, the time in between. It is after and before; it is a time of possibility. Things become visible, or nearly so, that would at other times be obscured in the darkness or overwhelmed by the light. Transitions are times to be valued, not eliminated.

The Top Five Reasons not to Call an Agenda-free Meeting

Meetings can be useful and essential and even inspiring. They can also be a tremendous waste of time and energy. Harvard Business Review has a handy calculator that helps determine the cost of a meeting. This calculator addresses time spent and the cost to a business based on how much the attendees are paid.

It’s a good start, but it doesn’t address the annoyance cost of the agenda-free meeting.

1. Meetings are not inherently useful. That means they need to have a purpose.

2. Share that purpose with others. Otherwise, it looks like power tripping because . . .

3. The person who called the meeting inevitably has an agenda.

4. Secret agendas are annoying at best. They can also be threatening.

5. Meetings are not inherently useful, and worse, they can be really inefficient and frustrating. Not telling people why they are coming to a meeting increases your chances of an inefficient and frustrating meeting.

Multiply the length of the meeting by the number of people attending to get a rough estimate of the time cost.

PS Telling people you want to “gather information” with no additional detail is not an agenda, but it’s something.