250130 ↔ 00:16:53 → 11206
I used to beat myself up for doing nothing.
Now I find power in the void.
I caught myself doing it again today - getting upset that I had been wasting so much time scrolling X trying to gather more information about the horrific plane crash at DCA last night. But then I began to think and realize - I made a conscious choice to do this - what am I upset about?
Society has put these unrealistic expectations on us as individuals to always be working, doing something, or just in general being productive.
I find this idea hard to understand.
If someone spends all of their waking time working and killing themselves to not “waste time” are they really doing that? Or are they wasting their time working their entire life away?
I found myself stuck in this trap - wasting time beating myself up for wasting time. But what was I really doing in this so-called wasting time phase?
The reality is I wasn’t actively trying to do anything but browse my phone and get lost in my head. Would it have been better if I did this while I pretended to do “work” or something else? Nah.
We all have succumbed to this trope at some point - we must keep working in order to be successful. But I disagree with that concept completely.
I think now is a good time to re-introduce the concept of “work smarter, not harder”. It sounds cliche but hear me out - there are often more intelligent ways to do a lot of the things people get paid to do.
Why are these tasks performed in a certain way then? It could be anything from tradition, to stubbornness, to the simple fact that the process of which the task itself is performed has never been reinvented - or maybe its a combo of all three? (or more)
The concept is relatively simple - understand what needs to be done in order to reach the maximum amount of output per time spent and spend all of your time honing in on this process. Eventually you will become so versed in this ideology that you will begin to start rethinking the world around you.
It is with this mindset that you will begin to dream up better ways to do things (or simply things that do not exist yet) and turn these into potential ventures that could become something that fuels your life.
It is these kinds of pursuits - the ones that drive you from bed every morning to continue to build - that will make your life - not only for the sake of satisfaction, but also for the sake of wealth creation.
Could I always be doing more? No, not always.
Are there certainly times in which I should be doing something to advance my future and bring more future happiness? Absolutely.
But sometimes it is best for us to take a step back and take time for ourselves to do nothing. Plan on nothing. The less you have on your calendar the better.
When you begin to have more of these times to let your mind wander, you will begin to start thinking of things that could define your whole future.
The best ideas come when you are least expecting them.
Plan time to do nothing - or whatever your version of that is. But remember, if you do, remind yourself that taking that time to do nothing was a choice, and relish in your own personal ability to be able to do that - for that is a modern luxury.
Leaving time to do nothing every day is quite unreasonable. All progress comes from this point.
“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
