# Do Nothing by Celeste Headlee - Blinkist What’s in it for me? Learn to value leisure time over efficiency. Whether they’re exercising twice a day, learning Italian from home, or putting in long hours at a tech startup, it can seem like people are more efficient and productive than ever. But is this a good thing? According to the author, our obsession with efficiency is making us unhappy, stressed out, and physically ill. For years, we’ve been pursuing ever-increasing benchmarks as though high productivity is what really matters in life. Ultimately, we’ve only succeeded in making ourselves miserable. These blinks offer both a diagnosis and a plan of action. Combining an overview of where we’ve gone wrong in the past with simple strategies to set things right in the future, they’re an antidote to our hyper-productive world. In these blinks, you’ll learn why we shouldn’t aim to spend “quality time” with family; why one question can reduce your enjoyment of music; and why the human voice is an unmatched method of communication. Our modern fixation with productivity is rooted in the past. Recently, you might have noticed that productivity is trending. Everyone seems to be getting busier and busier, and goals for our work and personal lives have never seemed so ambitious. Maybe your friends have got you thinking about running a marathon. Perhaps you’re planning your next promotion. Or maybe you’re wondering if your kids should learn an instrument or take up another sport.  If you're constantly adding to your to-do lists, looking to optimize your schedule, and hoping to somehow find more hours in the day, you might have fallen victim to the “cult of efficiency.” So, what exactly is this cult? Well, it’s an attitude that supposes that the busier we are, the better. And although it’s never been more powerful than it is right now, this phenomenon didn’t grow overnight. The key message here is: Our modern fixation with productivity is rooted in the past. Believe it or not, we didn’t always work as hard as we do now. Even medieval peasants worked fewer hours than the average modern worker – and they also had more vacation time! But things changed in the days of the Industrial Revolution. Rather than paying workers per task, factory owners began to pay wages per hour. This led to a dramatic increase in the number of hours people were expected to work. In the US, popular faith in the American Dream helped to normalize these new, grueling work regimens. Who could complain about longer workdays, when everyone knew hard work helped you to get ahead in life? This American belief that diligence and perseverance are always rewarded with wealth, helped to sow the seeds of our modern cult of efficiency. Now the distribution of wealth is a different story. Since the 1960s, worker pay has just about outpaced inflation, but in the same period, CEOs have been taking home bigger and bigger paychecks. So, in essence, the fruit of our increased efficiency is usually reaped by our bosses and not by us. Our push for productivity has also been influenced by consumer culture. Clever marketing has convinced us to work longer hours in order to afford products we’ve never previously wanted – and the constant barrage of new fashions and gadgets has kept us working long after we’ve taken care of our most basic needs. The cult of efficiency makes us feel guilty about enjoying leisure time. As we’ve just seen, the Industrial Age introduced a shift in worker compensation. Employees were paid per hour of work, not per task performed. In some ways, this seems like a trivial distinction – but its psychological effects are profound. Why? Because when you pay workers based on the number of hours they clock up, you actually change their attitudes toward time – especially toward time off. When industrial employees learned to put a dollar value on an hour of their time, an hour of leisure began to seem increasingly indulgent. With the financial cost of leisure more apparent, we began to think of time off as wasted time. This isn’t only of historical interest. In fact, it’s as true today as it was back then. The key message here is: The cult of efficiency makes us feel guilty about enjoying leisure time. Consider an experiment run by researchers at UCLA and the University of Toronto. Participants in this study broke off into two groups, and each listened to a short piece of classical music. Before listening, however, the members of one group were asked to estimate their hourly wage. The results of the study? People who had thought about the financial value of their time were significantly more eager for the music to end. Put plainly, thinking about their hourly wage made it harder for them to sit back and enjoy the music. It’s no surprise, then, that we often find it hard to disconnect from work when we get home. In fact, researchers use the term polluted time to describe the kind of time off we experience when we still feel the need to return emails, field calls, and mull over business decisions. The effect of polluted time is that many people never truly feel at leisure. And this is one of the major downsides of modern, flexible work schedules. Back when we worked from 9 to 5 every day, it was easy to know where work ended and our free time began. Now that our hours are “flexible,” these two worlds are much more likely to overlap. The drawbacks of polluted time are numerous. Taking a real break from work boosts our creativity and our productivity, and can even strengthen the immune system. Overwork, on the other hand, often only increases our income by 6 percent a year – a poor trade-off, given the exhaustion and stress that excessive work can trigger. Even in our personal lives, we strive for efficiency. So far, things have been pretty straightforward. We’ve dealt with the origins of the cult of efficiency, and discussed some of the ways that work can “pollute” our time off and interfere with our leisure. All we need to do is keep our work and personal lives separate, and the problem will be solved – right? Well, not quite. You see, one of the most important things about the efficiency trend is that it very quickly escaped its origins in the workplace and became an attitude toward life in general. So even if you haven’t worked in years, you might find yourself under the sway of a mindset that values constant self-improvement and busyness for their own sake. The key message here is: Even in our personal lives, we strive for efficiency. One way that we can trace the intrusion of efficiency into our personal lives is in the idea of spending “quality time” with family. Now, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to spend time with loved ones; it’s often a rewarding antidote to our usual focus on “getting things done.” But the notion of quality time supposes that we can and should cram our family obligations into a few rewarding, compressed, and memorable hours. In other words, quality time is family life adapted to a productivity mindset – a mentality which was once confined to the workplace. Another way we can identify an efficiency mindset in our personal lives is by paying attention to the social value attached to being busy. Abundant leisure time once signaled wealth and high social status, but now the tables have completely turned. These days, college-educated workers are twice as likely to work over 40 hours a week, compared to people without a degree. In this light, it’s no surprise that busyness has become such a valued characteristic. And our eagerness to share our achievements on social media makes clear that busyness brings undeniable prestige. Our focus on efficiency can deprive us of meaningful human connections. Before the Industrial Revolution drew employees to big cities, the vast majority of people lived in small, close-knit communities. These communities suited the social needs of the times; people required a small number of intimate friends, a wider group of good companions, and a larger circle of familiar acquaintances. Unfortunately, these days many of our social needs go unmet. Having hundreds of “friends” on Facebook simply can’t replace the emotional connections of a warm, real-world community. Sadly, we’ve eroded a lot of human intimacy in our quest to make our lives more efficient – a fact with unignorable consequences. You see, isolation isn’t just emotionally painful. Among other dangers, it can cut your lifespan and even increase your risk of getting cancer or suffering a heart attack. The key message here is: Our focus on efficiency can deprive us of meaningful human connections. Let’s look at the problem in a microcosm. The difference between typing a message and actually speaking with someone can tell us a lot about the downsides of maximizing efficiency at every turn. In the world of work, emails and texts frequently come in handy. For one, they can be sent at any time, whether or not the person you’re contacting is free to talk. Not only that, you’re both left with matching records of the exchange, so there’s no room for confusion down the line. Despite these advantages, we still lose a lot when we neglect the human voice. One of its greatest strengths is the fact that it can humanize whoever’s speaking. This isn’t just sentimental talk: a recent study showed that we’re better at tolerating differing opinions when we hear them articulated out loud compared to when we read them. Another fascinating study hooked participants up to an fMRI machine and monitored their brain waves as they listened to a story being told. Astoundingly, the researchers found that listeners’ brain activity began to imitate that of the storyteller! Scientists call this phenomenon speaker-listener neural coupling or, in plain words, mind meld. No number of emojis can match that emotional impact, which makes establishing meaningful connections over email very difficult. Once again, then, the triumph of efficiency has ultimately proved to be hollow. Social media makes it too easy to compare ourselves to others. There’s no denying that social media has aided and abetted the cult of efficiency in its rise to power. After all, it’s the ideal place to brag about everything you’ve checked off your to-do list. Have you just finished your tenth meeting of the day? Then tweet about how busy you are. Did you bake an elaborate cake? Well, why not share a picture on Instagram! Run a marathon for charity? Don’t forget to tell all of your Facebook friends about it. There is a catch, though. When we use social media, we don’t just share updates about ourselves – we also encounter the updates other people post.  The key message here is: Social media makes it too easy to compare ourselves to others. If we’re not careful, the desire to outdo others can leave us engaged in an endless contest to be the most efficient and productive person on the internet. Needless to say, that’s a battle we can never win. It’s human nature to compare ourselves with those around us. That fact is unlikely to change anytime soon, and it certainly didn’t originate in the age of social media. All the same, social media has profoundly changed the rules of the game. In the past, we were sharply limited in the number of people we could compare ourselves with. For the most part, “keeping up with the Joneses” meant matching the living standards of a handful of neighbors and colleagues. Now, however, anyone on your timeline can be the Joneses. That might be fine if you only follow close friends and family – but what about those of us who follow the Kardashians and Elon Musk? When we compare ourselves with hugely successful outliers like these, we implicitly tell ourselves that we’re not good enough – and that the lives we lead are woefully inadequate. The solution? Learn to ground your evaluations in yourself, without reference to anyone else and what they might have done.  In other words, stop comparing your messy spaghetti bolognese with the picture-perfect dish you saw on Instagram. If the meal was good enough for you, you don’t have to bother with any painful comparisons. A few simple changes can help us to slow down and improve our quality of life. Granted, the cult of efficiency is everywhere. It dominates the workplace and is making inroads into our personal lives. It pollutes our leisure time and can deprive us of enriching human interactions. And if our lives fail to measure up when compared with those of others, the cult of efficiency can make us feel as though we’re utterly inadequate people. But that doesn’t mean all hope is lost. In fact, the opposite is true. Our single-minded focus on productivity is one of the very few problems we can solve by actually doing nothing. But, as easy as that sounds, doing nothing is something we need to consciously plan. The key message here is: A few simple changes can help us to slow down and improve our quality of life. The first problem we need to confront in tackling our focus on efficiency is that many of us have simply no idea where our time goes. For example, studies have shown that people frequently overestimate how long they work; despite widespread feelings of burnout, the total time spent working hasn’t actually risen in the past few decades! So, what we need to do is to improve our time perception. Why? Well, to begin with, believing that we’re overworked can impede our decision-making and compassion – whether or not we’re really working excessive hours. Secondly, people with better time perception are less likely to feel overwhelmed, and spend less time watching TV and browsing social media sites. As a result, they can make time for true leisure. In fact, a study conducted at the Berlin Academy of Music found that the best young musicians were the most aware of how they spent their time. Not only were they conscious of the hours they spent rehearsing – they were also more aware of the amount of the time they spent socializing and relaxing. How can you make use of this information in your own life? Start by keeping a log of your activities in order to improve your time perception. Log everything, even if it’s just browsing social media. Once you have a clear picture of how you currently spend your time, craft a schedule outlining how you’d like your days to look. Remember, this is a schedule that prioritizes leisure, not productivity. Set aside a chunk of time every day to allow yourself to be totally idle and unproductive. To recover our leisure time, we must learn to distinguish between means and ends. One of the problems with extolling efficiency and productivity is that these values can cause us to lose sight of the bigger picture. A culture that stresses hard work and busyness doesn’t just persuade us to neglect leisure time; it also encourages us to focus on means instead of ends. To be more explicit, focusing on how much we get done can lead us to overlook what we get done. Lots of us are so concerned with checking boxes that we’ve stopped asking whether the things we’re doing are truly making us any happier. By paying so much attention to efficiency, we’re neglecting the end goal and instead focusing on the process. Once we learn to set this right, the cult of efficiency loses much of its appeal. The key message here is: To recover our leisure time, we must learn to distinguish between means and ends. Put simply, a means is a process or a method that brings us closer to an end goal. Getting a good job might be a means of earning a decent salary, which might in turn be a means of raising a happy family. And eating healthily, for example, is a sensible means of living a longer life. The problem with focusing on efficiency is that it leads us to ignore the end goal. Clocking up long hours at the office might be an impressive show of self-discipline, but it can also interfere with valuable long-term goals – like establishing close relationships with our children, or giving back to our local communities. So what can be done? Well, we need to make a habit of questioning whether our “productive” behaviors are bringing us any closer to our cherished, long-term goals.  Does answering emails on a Sunday morning help you to achieve anything you care about? If the answer is no, then cut it out of your life. Are you exercising twice a day in order to improve your health, or just for the satisfaction of getting things done? If it’s not helping you achieve an end goal, feel free to drop the excessive workouts. If you lose sight of your long-term goals, it’s easy to fill your life with “productive” but ultimately unrewarding activities. Once you drop these tasks, you’ll find that you have enough time to work towards your real aims and also to relax. Final summary The key message in these blinks: Our current focus on maximizing efficiency has blinded us to the joys of leisure and idleness. Ironically, our obsession with improving our lives has actually left us lonelier, sicker, and more stressed than ever before. The solution to this state of affairs is simple: make time for true leisure in your life and just do nothing. Actionable advice: Manage people’s expectations by changing your email signature. If you feel pressure to respond to emails the minute they arrive in your inbox, you’re going to find it very hard to disconnect from the workplace in order to enjoy real leisure. To make it easier for yourself, consider changing your email signature to explain that you don’t reply to messages immediately. A simple note saying something like, “Thanks for your email. I try to respond to all messages within 24 hours,” should be enough to do the trick. Got feedback? We’d love to hear what you think about our content! Just drop an email to remember@blinkist.com with Do Nothing as the subject line and share your thoughts! What to read next: Unplug, by Suze Yalof Schwartz Are you intrigued by the idea of slowing the pace of your life? Of regaining a sense of calm and composure in a busy world? Do you think it’ll take more than just leisure to soothe your addled mind? If so, it’s time to read our blinks to Unplug. Providing an introduction to meditation, as well as a fascinating account of meditation’s many benefits, these blinks are the perfect antidote to an increasingly hurried world.