How Wasting Time Makes Us More Productive
During about a year, here at ArtAchieve, we had been narrowly focused on getting our art lessons into video format, and the experience has reminded us a profound truth about getting work done.
Our experience has been like a doctor/friend of ours who has been focused on learning a new medical treatment he hopes to use in his practice. He has continued to work full time, and on weekends he goes for long days of training. “All of a sudden,” he told me, “I realized that I’ve almost missed summer!”
Likewise, my wife and I recently started listing all the things we used to do and haven’t done for a while: - hiking in the woods, or sitting on the lawn bench in the evening to read a book, for example. We’ve been too focused on the movie-making to take time for such simple pleasures.
In the short term, such focus can be quite productive, but over the long haul, it’s not. We need to waste time, to step aside from our work. The breaks feed and refresh us, and there are many ways to find such breaks.
Do boring things
-
Stare out the window,
-
Putter around the yard,
-
Go for a walk, or
-
Paint the house.
Cultivate other interests
I remember an academic dean who once suggested that I had too many interests, and that I should focus on just one of them. He seemed to think that doing so would make me more productive in my job as a college theater professor. What he didn’t understand was that all these little side steps I was taking -
-
playing violin,
-
telling stories,
-
gardening,
-
recreating antique furniture from scratch - fed my “real” job of teaching.
Pray
While he was a university president, Robert Spitzer SJ was also known for his productive publishing. He wrote on topics ranging from quantum mechanics to finding happiness to best business practices, and he attributed his ability to get things done to his habit of spending an hour in prayer a day.
Do an art project.
Researchers at Drexel University found that 3/4 of people who did an art project (and it made no difference how skilled they were) had lower levels of cortisol, the stress hormone at the end of a 45 minutes art project. Among the others, cortisol rose in some, but researchers said it was likely because they were so engaged, and that would be a good thing too.
Why do breaks such as these feed productivity?
A farm-yard example helps to explain. We recently joined a community-supported farm in order to supplement the supply of vegetables our garden provides, and the farmer once told us how his chickens and pigs and cattle are all part of his garden (the main focus of his work).
In the winter, he puts his cattle in the barn whose floor is covered with wood chips and straw. By spring, the once-clean bedding is saturated with manure. Now that may sound like a great thing to put on the garden, but it would burn the crops at this stage.
So in the spring, the farmer sprinkles grain over the manure/straw mix, and when the grain has sprouted, he puts his pigs where the cattle have been. Pigs love digging for food, and have a great time turning the raw straw into compost.
When the pigs finish, he spreads the compost on the garden, and his chickens scratch for any leftover tidbits as they work the compost into the soil.
That’s how it works with “wasting” time. All those inputs from our outside activities compost together and enrich our “real” work with new insights. We don’t plan for it to happen. It just does. And our work is the better for it.
The concept is so important that the ancient Hebrews had a law that they had to “waste” one day in seven, and on every seventh year they had to let their land rest. Taking a break refreshed them, their society, and their environment. Wasting time is still a necessary part of being productive.
Sources:
“Create Art, Stress Less,” in Better Nutrition, September 2016, p. 14.
Steal Like an Artist, by Austin Kleon. Workman Publishing Company. 2012.
During about a year, here at ArtAchieve, we had been narrowly focused on getting our art lessons into video format, and the experience has reminded us a profound truth about getting work done.
Our experience has been like a doctor/friend of ours who has been focused on learning a new medical treatment he hopes to use in his practice. He has continued to work full time, and on weekends he goes for long days of training. “All of a sudden,” he told me, “I realized that I’ve almost missed summer!”
Likewise, my wife and I recently started listing all the things we used to do and haven’t done for a while: - hiking in the woods, or sitting on the lawn bench in the evening to read a book, for example. We’ve been too focused on the movie-making to take time for such simple pleasures.
In the short term, such focus can be quite productive, but over the long haul, it’s not. We need to waste time, to step aside from our work. The breaks feed and refresh us, and there are many ways to find such breaks.
Do boring things
-
Stare out the window,
-
Putter around the yard,
-
Go for a walk, or
-
Paint the house.
Cultivate other interests
I remember an academic dean who once suggested that I had too many interests, and that I should focus on just one of them. He seemed to think that doing so would make me more productive in my job as a college theater professor. What he didn’t understand was that all these little side steps I was taking -
-
playing violin,
-
telling stories,
-
gardening,
-
recreating antique furniture from scratch - fed my “real” job of teaching.
Pray
While he was a university president, Robert Spitzer SJ was also known for his productive publishing. He wrote on topics ranging from quantum mechanics to finding happiness to best business practices, and he attributed his ability to get things done to his habit of spending an hour in prayer a day.
Do an art project.
Researchers at Drexel University found that 3/4 of people who did an art project (and it made no difference how skilled they were) had lower levels of cortisol, the stress hormone at the end of a 45 minutes art project. Among the others, cortisol rose in some, but researchers said it was likely because they were so engaged, and that would be a good thing too.
Why do breaks such as these feed productivity?
A farm-yard example helps to explain. We recently joined a community-supported farm in order to supplement the supply of vegetables our garden provides, and the farmer once told us how his chickens and pigs and cattle are all part of his garden (the main focus of his work).
In the winter, he puts his cattle in the barn whose floor is covered with wood chips and straw. By spring, the once-clean bedding is saturated with manure. Now that may sound like a great thing to put on the garden, but it would burn the crops at this stage.
So in the spring, the farmer sprinkles grain over the manure/straw mix, and when the grain has sprouted, he puts his pigs where the cattle have been. Pigs love digging for food, and have a great time turning the raw straw into compost.
When the pigs finish, he spreads the compost on the garden, and his chickens scratch for any leftover tidbits as they work the compost into the soil.
That’s how it works with “wasting” time. All those inputs from our outside activities compost together and enrich our “real” work with new insights. We don’t plan for it to happen. It just does. And our work is the better for it.
The concept is so important that the ancient Hebrews had a law that they had to “waste” one day in seven, and on every seventh year they had to let their land rest. Taking a break refreshed them, their society, and their environment. Wasting time is still a necessary part of being productive.
Sources:
“Create Art, Stress Less,” in Better Nutrition, September 2016, p. 14.
Steal Like an Artist, by Austin Kleon. Workman Publishing Company. 2012.
During about a year, here at ArtAchieve, we had been narrowly focused on getting our art lessons into video format, and the experience has reminded us a profound truth about getting work done.
Our experience has been like a doctor/friend of ours who has been focused on learning a new medical treatment he hopes to use in his practice. He has continued to work full time, and on weekends he goes for long days of training. “All of a sudden,” he told me, “I realized that I’ve almost missed summer!”
Likewise, my wife and I recently started listing all the things we used to do and haven’t done for a while: - hiking in the woods, or sitting on the lawn bench in the evening to read a book, for example. We’ve been too focused on the movie-making to take time for such simple pleasures.
In the short term, such focus can be quite productive, but over the long haul, it’s not. We need to waste time, to step aside from our work. The breaks feed and refresh us, and there are many ways to find such breaks.
Do boring things
-
Stare out the window,
-
Putter around the yard,
-
Go for a walk, or
-
Paint the house.
Cultivate other interests
I remember an academic dean who once suggested that I had too many interests, and that I should focus on just one of them. He seemed to think that doing so would make me more productive in my job as a college theater professor. What he didn’t understand was that all these little side steps I was taking -
-
playing violin,
-
telling stories,
-
gardening,
-
recreating antique furniture from scratch - fed my “real” job of teaching.
Pray
While he was a university president, Robert Spitzer SJ was also known for his productive publishing. He wrote on topics ranging from quantum mechanics to finding happiness to best business practices, and he attributed his ability to get things done to his habit of spending an hour in prayer a day.
Do an art project.
Researchers at Drexel University found that 3/4 of people who did an art project (and it made no difference how skilled they were) had lower levels of cortisol, the stress hormone at the end of a 45 minutes art project. Among the others, cortisol rose in some, but researchers said it was likely because they were so engaged, and that would be a good thing too.
Why do breaks such as these feed productivity?
A farm-yard example helps to explain. We recently joined a community-supported farm in order to supplement the supply of vegetables our garden provides, and the farmer once told us how his chickens and pigs and cattle are all part of his garden (the main focus of his work).
In the winter, he puts his cattle in the barn whose floor is covered with wood chips and straw. By spring, the once-clean bedding is saturated with manure. Now that may sound like a great thing to put on the garden, but it would burn the crops at this stage.
So in the spring, the farmer sprinkles grain over the manure/straw mix, and when the grain has sprouted, he puts his pigs where the cattle have been. Pigs love digging for food, and have a great time turning the raw straw into compost.
When the pigs finish, he spreads the compost on the garden, and his chickens scratch for any leftover tidbits as they work the compost into the soil.
That’s how it works with “wasting” time. All those inputs from our outside activities compost together and enrich our “real” work with new insights. We don’t plan for it to happen. It just does. And our work is the better for it.
The concept is so important that the ancient Hebrews had a law that they had to “waste” one day in seven, and on every seventh year they had to let their land rest. Taking a break refreshed them, their society, and their environment. Wasting time is still a necessary part of being productive.
Sources:
“Create Art, Stress Less,” in Better Nutrition, September 2016, p. 14.
Steal Like an Artist, by Austin Kleon. Workman Publishing Company. 2012.
