I made this my Facebook status today and it was immediately well received. Made me ponder that maybe I was on to something.
Think about it.
All year long we race around, make lists, disappoint ourselves with never completing everything we set out to do in a day. Why? For what reason do I set myself up for hyper-productivity? Like I am a better person if all the laundry is done and my closets are cleaned at the end of a weekend day? Yeh, right. Who cares if maybe the blueberries in the fridge are a little on the fuzzy side (ok, maybe my daughter since she did mention tossing them) — we could think of them as pets instead of food. Kind of like domestic multi-use.
I worked with someone once who told me a clean desk was the sign of a sick mind. Maybe everything done and in order all the time is not such a big deal. Maybe it is actually a losing a battle. Maybe an ever evolving to-do list is ok. Maybe sometimes we need to shut up and shut down in order to rest up to push that bolder back up the hill when we have no other choice. Perhaps the doing nothing piece is a way of letting the brain slow down to gear up again. This is a completely different way of thinking for someone like me. I am usually a moving target.
I won’t lie, lying around is not usually my thing. If I am not productive for too long a period of time I start to feel lousy. But there is something to be said for lounging in bed and reading a book, staying in your pajamas till 3:00 (or 4, or 5), drinking a little too much (define ‘too much’) and just hanging out. Hey, my kids seem to think that it is a full time job. I wonder what they would do if I moved the couches out of the house.
My point? I guess it would be that having a couple of weeks at the end of the year to lose the scheduling and the frenzy and just be lazy can have its benefits. First, for someone like me, at the end of all this I am dying to be productive again. But while I am still in it I am starting to take some pleasure in being a slug.
My family, on the other hand, wants to know why we don’t have any ______ (fill in the blank) left in the house.
Hey, you guys all drive…
Haven’t had enough of me yet? You can also read me at 50-Something Moms Blog. For photo enthusiasts, visit Leaving the zip code, photos from outside the comfort zone.
Up until this week, I have taken one day in 2009 that I didn’t work. I actually know that because, I’m always working and in order to take a day off work, I have to deliberately watch what I am doing or I’m working without even realizing it.
But, earlier in the week I made the decision to take a few days off. I read blog after blog out of my feed reader and not just the most recent ones for each person either. Now, I’m having a hard time getting motivated to actually work again, lol.
I started 2009 with the goal of reading and commenting on 50 blogs a day. I did that and then around May I had so much other stuff going on that I went down to 30 blogs a day (5 days a week, but I still worked on the other two days).
By September, I was barely reading blogs at all and commenting, ha, my feed reader routinely had 3000 reads in it. So, I reset my thoughts and I’m going to attempt 20 blogs, reading and commenting, going into the new year. And I don’t mean comments like “I had to comment here” or “count this as a comment” and not comments on contests either. Truly reading blogs and responding to others. Taking it back a year and working on the basics…..
And I found I loved it so much…I don’t want to do any work, hehehe! So, I’ll take the lazy way anyday……it’s a lot more fun
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Thanks for this post Amy. I’d like to share my latest project with you, but just as a disclaimer, you should know that my willpower to be consistent in most things aside from work, eating, sleeping and worrying has been pretty crappy most of my life. I’m trying again, this time with a realistic list of to dos: http://zenfuldance.wordpress.com/2011/01/03/day-125-day-5-…-path-makeover/
I’d love to hear what you think.
Thanks,
TZB