Do Nothing summary

As we’ve just seen, the Industrial Age introduced a shift in worker compensation. Employees were paid per hour of work, not per task performed. In some ways, this seems like a trivial distinction – but its psychological effects are profound.

Why? Because when you pay workers based on the number of hours they clock up, you actually change their attitudes toward time – especially toward time off. When industrial employees learned to put a dollar value on an hour of their time, an hour of leisure began to seem increasingly indulgent.

So far, things have been pretty straightforward. We’ve dealt with the origins of the cult of efficiency, and discussed some of the ways that work can “pollute” our time off and interfere with our leisure.

All we need to do is keep our work and personal lives separate, and the problem will be solved – right?

Before the Industrial Revolution drew employees to big cities, the vast majority of people lived in small, close-knit communities. These communities suited the social needs of the times; people required a small number of intimate friends, a wider group of good companions, and a larger circle of familiar acquaintances.

Unfortunately, these days many of our social needs go unmet. Having hundreds of “friends” on Facebook simply can’t replace the emotional connections of a warm, real-world community.

There’s no denying that social media has aided and abetted the cult of efficiency in its rise to power. After all, it’s the ideal place to brag about everything you’ve checked off your to-do list.

Have you just finished your tenth meeting of the day? Then tweet about how busy you are. Did you bake an elaborate cake? Well, why not share a picture on Instagram! Run a marathon for charity? Don’t forget to tell all of your Facebook friends about it.

Granted, the cult of efficiency is everywhere. It dominates the workplace and is making inroads into our personal lives. It pollutes our leisure time and can deprive us of enriching human interactions. And if our lives fail to measure up when compared with those of others, the cult of efficiency can make us feel as though we’re utterly inadequate people.

But that doesn’t mean all hope is lost. In fact, the opposite is true. Our single-minded focus on productivity is one of the very few problems we can solve by actually doing nothing. But, as easy as that sounds, doing nothing is something we need to consciously plan.

One of the problems with extolling efficiency and productivity is that these values can cause us to lose sight of the bigger picture. A culture that stresses hard work and busyness doesn’t just persuade us to neglect leisure time; it also encourages us to focus on means instead of ends.

To be more explicit, focusing on how much we get done can lead us to overlook what we get done. Lots of us are so concerned with checking boxes that we’ve stopped asking whether the things we’re doing are truly making us any happier.