Try This Week: be unproductive, inefficient, or both!
bonus points for doing it in stretchy pants
Hi! My name is Bree, and I write about how to make work more joyful and less everything. Subscribe for weekly essays on everything from rewiring organizations to cozy teams to living a Portfolio Life.
Things that have been swimming around my brain the last few days:
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’s “The Great Teen Babysitter Shortage” in which she argues part of the problem is that parents only want their kids spending time on activities that “legible on a resume” and that does not include hanging with some neighbor kids.+
’s “Hands-on, Thumbs-off” piece highlighting “granny hobbies”. You know—“reading, knitting, gardening, crafting, cooking, baking, board games, sewing, birdwatching, playing cards, drinking tea…” Great for digital detox, and also great because they defy the notion that we need to be constantly producing things of economic value. This assumes you’re not monetizing your birdwatching hobby on YouTube.+ The fact that I get annoyed with myself when I make coffee in the wrong order. We have a Nespresso that takes maybe 15 seconds to warm up, so the most efficient way to do it is to press the “on” button, then warm up a bit of milk in the microwave for 30 seconds while the Nespresso heats, then put the mug of warm milk under the Nespresso which is now ready to go. To forget to press the button and warm the milk first means I then waste FIFTEEN WHOLE SECONDS waiting for the Nespresso, and I most definitely spend those fifteen seconds grumpy and wondering if my whole day will be an equally inefficient disaster.
This is one of those confessions that I hope people will read and be like, “ME TOO! I FEEL SEEN!” but I’m aware it might be one where people are like, “Nope, that’s just you, Bree… weirdo.”
What bothers me is that it bothers me. It’s things like The Great Coffee Inefficiency that shake me awake and make me wonder how I got this way. What is this water I’ve been swimming in that I feel the need to optimize each moment of my day for extreme efficiency?
Has the corporate drive for efficiency seeped into my life? A hangover of the survival mode we were in when Arden was younger and everything felt like a scramble? Is it just the culture in the US and specifically NYC that has taught me inefficiency should be weeded out at all costs?
Whatever it is, I don’t like it.
I can afford 15 seconds of inefficiency. What I can’t afford is letting that inefficiency make me grumpy because it offends my misguided belief that if I’m not optimizing I’m doing it wrong.
Perhaps embarrassingly, I have LOTS of stories that go like this. Feel free to ask me about them sometime. But instead of cementing my weirdness in your brain, instead let me transition to a challenge for us all this week:
Do something inefficiently.
On purpose.
Because you want to.
Because it’s joyful.
Because it’s fine!
Go the long way home or try to doodle a really symmetrical star for the fun of it or chop some veggies extra slow. I figure it’s part of my de-programming as a “human resource” and reprogramming as a “human human”.
Let me know how it goes!
P.S. True to my philosophy that work should be fun, I adore writing these posts. But I also want them to be fun for you! Useful, too. So here’s one experiment in writing something in the form of “try this” if you too are on a quest to make work more joyful and less everything.
Is it more/less/differently helpful than my my opinionated or dreamy posts? Any other suggestions for formats that might be fun? Q&As? Day-in-the-life vignettes of me or a guest? I’d even write you a haiku if you wanted but I couldn’t guarantee the quality…
your posts make me smile with recognition. this one especially. how dare the kettle take so long to boil. doesn't it know I have things to do?!
Hi Bree, Related, check out Cal Newport’s newest book, Slow Productivity.
In my youth, I was a fan of the group Supertramp. One of their songs, Take the Long Way Home, became a mantra on my corporate commute, and continues today, post corporate. I skip the expressway in favor of driving down streets and drive through communities for the first time in forever/ever just to break up the monotony. I also get better economy with my electric car. :)