Staring off into space
The web only takes an hour to make. Most of a spider’s time is spent waiting. (Image by FotoRieth)
Productivity is a trap, you know.
It can be very satisfying to knock out task after routine, mundane task. Answer an email, then archive it so it disappears from your inbox. Load the dishwasher and start the cycle. Proofread the document.
It’s a little scarier to do things that don’t have clear beginnings and endings. Some of these things aren’t tasks at all.
In coaching leaders, I have noticed that many of us have a tendency to cling to the familiar tasks that make us feel productive. Even when we can hand these off to other people on the team, they tempt us with the promise of quick wins.
In order to grow, we need to spend more time staring off into space instead of getting stuff done.
This is starkly counterintuitive and may not match what has worked for us thus far in our career. But time and energy for staring off into space allows us to begin to see past what is and toward what could be.
The more resistance we have to doing it, the more we probably need to do it. Yes, there are a million things that need to get done, and there always will be. But we need time — not just in our personal life, but in our workday — to be still and do absolutely nothing. We have to let go of thinking that keeping our hands and minds constantly busy is the recipe for success.
Yes, intense action is what is required of a line cook or an emergency room nurse in the heat of the moment. But it’s in the quiet moments of reflection — or after moments of thinking of nothing at all — that breakthroughs happen. We might question the status quo. We might spot ways to improve our systems and processes. Or we might simply benefit from a mental break — a bit of a reset.
Frustratingly, there is no good way to measure the value of staring off into space. More than likely, you won’t be able to tie your “doing nothing” time to a breakthrough or shift that happens subsequently. It’s hard to justify it on paper. That doesn’t mean it isn’t valuable.
If you’re desperate to feel productive in some way, go for a walk without any kind of audio diversion. Take a shower. Take up a handcraft that is repetitive and requires no thinking. Do whatever you can to avoid hiding behind the dopamine rush of ticking boxes on a checklist that, while it might make you feel safely virtuous, doesn’t do a thing to help you with the hard work you don’t know how to do yet.
Make mistakes, experiment, find the blind alleys. End the day apparently no farther along than you were the day before. I promise you that it will make a difference. You can’t really track the hourly or daily progress along the way, though — sorry about that.
As you release yourself from the pressure to be visibly productive and embrace the ritual of staring off into space, you will gain a sense of perspective — slightly remote and elevated. You will be able to see farther and more clearly. Your decisions will become less stressful and your long-range planning will be more effective. How can you make this magic happen? It’s very difficult: Do absolutely nothing.
