Go Ahead and Waste Time
I will be the first to say that I love to optimize my life. I’ve spent over a decade mastering David Allen’s Getting Things Done productivity system, and time-tested life hacks such as email batching, meal planning and habit building are all important parts of my daily life.
But I am not optimizing my life to do more work: I am optimizing my life to give myself more time to rejuvenate.
Yes, I admit that when I first started working as a freelancer, I took the time to learn how to more efficiently file, write, and do the administrative work that is a typical working day. And, of course, I spent some of the time I saved writing additional articles and acquiring new clients.
But at some point, the most valuable thing I could do in my free time was to spend it on myself and the people I cared about.
And when I spend time on myself, sometimes it seems that I am not doing anything.
Sometimes it literally looks like I’m looking out the window or watching the flame of a candle I light as part of my shutdown ritual (an effective way to transform my studio from a workspace into a home space).
I call this type of inaction “meditation” when I want to justify it in front of other people, but I’m not really trying to calm or control my own thoughts. I try to listen to them. Basically, I sit still and think about what I want and enjoy the company of my own mind.
This means that I very strongly identified with his recent tweet from author Rainsford Stauffer :
It also reminded me of one of my favorite quotes from one of my favorite books as a child: A Dozen Cheaper by Frank B. Gilbreth and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey, which is a true story of 12 children growing up in an efficiency-led family:
Someone asked dad: “What do you want to save time? What are you going to do about it? “
“Go to work if you like it the most,” Dad said. “For education, for beauty, for art, for pleasure.” He looked over his pince-nez. “To mumble if your heart is in this place.”
So listen: of course, it makes sense to cook several dishes at once and then freeze them into separate portions if you are the type of person who does not want to spend part of each evening preparing food. But you don’t have to waste the time you save to be productive elsewhere . You can spend it staring at a candle, or talking to a family member, or even checking social media feeds on your phone if that’s what you really want to do.
Because the ultimate goal of life hacking is more life . No more life hacking.