I was sitting on my back porch yesterday, just watching the way the wind caught the leaves of the old oak tree in the yard. For about five minutes, I didn’t look at my phone. I didn’t have a podcast playing in my ears. I wasn’t thinking about my to-do list for Monday morning, and I wasn’t trying to “manifest” anything. I was just… there. And you know what? I felt incredibly guilty.
That guilt is what I want to talk about. It’s this weird, itchy feeling that if we aren’t producing something, learning something, or “optimizing” some part of our existence, then we’re somehow failing. We’ve been conditioned to treat our lives like a project to be managed rather than an experience to be lived. It’s exhausting, isn’t it? I’m tired of it, but even knowing that, it’s hard to stop. I think we need to relearn how to be unproductive.
The Optimization Trap
We live in a world that hates a vacuum. If there’s an empty ten minutes in our day—waiting for the kettle to boil, sitting on the bus, standing in line at the grocery store—we feel this physical urge to fill it. We check emails. We scroll through news feeds. We listen to “educational” content because heaven forbid we just stand there with our own thoughts for a second.
I caught myself doing this a few weeks ago. I was taking a walk, and I realized my headphones had died. My first instinct wasn’t to enjoy the birds or the sound of the wind; it was to feel annoyed that I was “wasting” the walk because I wasn’t learning anything new from a book. That’s a bizarre way to think. Since when did a walk in the woods require a return on investment?
We treat ourselves like machines that need constant upgrades. We want to “hack” our sleep so we can work more. We “optimize” our diets so we have more energy to be productive. But we never really stop to ask what all that extra productivity is for. If the end goal is just more work, then we’re just running faster on a treadmill that doesn’t go anywhere. I’ve spent years trying to find the perfect morning routine, the perfect calendar app, and the perfect workflow. All it did was make me better at being busy, not better at being happy.
Why We Fear the Silence
I think the reason we stay so busy is that silence is actually kind of scary. When you stop the noise, you have to deal with yourself. You have to listen to the quiet anxieties that you usually drown out with “hustle.” It’s much easier to feel like you’re winning at life if you have a color-coded calendar than it is to sit with the realization that maybe you don’t know what you’re doing with your life at all.
But there’s a specific kind of clarity that only comes when you let things get quiet. It’s not the kind of clarity that gives you a five-year plan. It’s the kind that reminds you that you like the smell of rain, or that you’ve been neglecting a friend, or that your shoulders have been up at your ears for three days straight. You can’t hear those things when you’re busy “crushing it.”
The ‘Side Hustle’ Tax on Joy
Have you noticed that you can’t just have a hobby anymore? If you’re good at baking, people tell you to start a bakery. If you like to paint, you’re told to set up an online shop. If you’re a decent photographer, you’re told to go professional. We’ve put a tax on joy where everything has to be “monetized” or “shared” to have value. It’s a tragedy, honestly.
- Doing things just because you’re bad at them is actually great for your brain.
- Having a secret hobby that nobody sees protects your sense of self.
- Not everything needs to be a “brand.”
I’ve started drawing again lately. I’m terrible at it. My proportions are all wrong, and I don’t understand shading. And the best part? I’m never going to show anyone. There’s no pressure to be “good” or to “grow an audience.” It’s just me, some cheap pencils, and a piece of paper. It’s the most productive thing I’ve done in months, precisely because it produces nothing of value to anyone else.
Learning to Be “Bad” at Things Again
There is a profound freedom in being a beginner. When you’re a beginner, you aren’t expected to be efficient. You aren’t expected to have a “process.” You’re allowed to just mess around and see what happens. Somewhere along the way to adulthood, we lost that. We became so obsessed with mastery and expertise that we stopped playing.
I remember trying to learn to sourdough during that phase when everyone was doing it. I got so caught up in the “science” of it—the hydration percentages, the temperature charts, the special baskets—that I forgot I just wanted a piece of bread. I was stressed out by a bowl of flour and water. That’s when I realized the optimization culture had even invaded my kitchen. I threw out the charts and just started feeling the dough. The bread wasn’t as “perfect,” but I actually enjoyed eating it for once.
We need more of that. We need more “unoptimized” experiences where the goal isn’t the result, but the doing. Whether it’s gardening where half the plants die, or playing an instrument poorly, or writing a journal that doesn’t make sense. It’s the friction of the process that makes us feel alive, not the polished end product.
The Radical Act of Just Sitting There
If you want to try this—and I mean really try it—set a timer for ten minutes today. Don’t look at a screen. Don’t read a book. Don’t fold laundry while you do it. Just sit. In a chair, on the floor, on a park bench. It doesn’t matter where.
You will probably feel itchy. You’ll feel like you’re forgetting something. Your brain will start shouting at you about all the things you *could* be doing. “You could be cleaning the oven! You could be answering that email from three days ago! You could be learning Spanish!” Just let it shout. Eventually, it runs out of steam. And in that gap, you might actually find yourself again.
It’s a radical act because everything in our current society is designed to keep us from doing it. Every app, every store, every “lifestyle” influencer is trying to capture your attention and turn it into something else. Reclaiming your attention for yourself, even for ten minutes, is a quiet kind of rebellion.
Some Thoughts on the Way Forward (Maybe)
I don’t have this all figured out. I still find myself reaching for my phone when I’m bored. I still feel that twinge of anxiety when I see someone else’s “perfectly productive” morning routine on social media. But I’m getting better at recognizing the trap. I’m learning that my worth isn’t tied to my output, even though the world keeps trying to convince me otherwise.
Maybe the point of all this isn’t to find a better way to live, but to just… live. To accept the mess and the slow parts and the days where you don’t accomplish anything other than keeping yourself alive and reasonably kind. That’s enough. In fact, it’s more than enough.
So, here’s my unsolicited advice: go do something useless today. Stare at a bird. Draw a bad picture. Take the long way home and don’t listen to anything but the sound of your own feet on the pavement. Your to-do list will still be there when you get back, but you might find that you care just a little bit less about it. And that, I think, is a very good thing.
It’s funny, I started writing this thinking it would be a short little note, and here I am, hundreds of words later, still thinking about it. I guess that’s the thing about slowing down—it gives you room to actually follow a thought to the end. I’m going to go make some tea now. And I’m going to try very hard not to do anything else while the water boils. It’ll be hard, but it’s a start.