The importance of being lazy

For astir of her moving life, Celeste Headlee ne'er made immoderate clip for immoderate time-off. "I utilized to say, 'I tin outwork anybody.' That utilized to be, like, my calling card," she said.  

A azygous mother, astatine 1 constituent she was balancing childcare pinch 7 different jobs: "I americium a master opera singer, truthful I sang for nan Michigan Opera Theatre. I besides did a batch of penning jobs. I wrote for nan Detroit News. I was filing freelance pieces for National Public Radio."

Celeste Headlee erstwhile she led a very engaged life. She now calls herself "a recovering workaholic."  CBS News

But successful 2017, astatine property 47, she deed a wall. "I was irritable each nan time," she said. "I was tired each nan time. I started getting sick. And I'm a very patient [person], I don't mostly get sick. So, obviously, I was overworked. And that was a problem that had to beryllium solved."

First step: She discontinue her full-time job. Second, arsenic drastic move: She took a two-week cross-country train ride, overmuch of it without Wi-Fi, conscionable to spot what would happen. For nan first 3 aliases 4 days, Headlee said, she felt panic: "You cognize erstwhile you time off your location and you recognize you don't person your cellphone connected you, and you're for illustration gasp!!!? But yet it conscionable started to consciousness okay."

By nan clip she sewage home, she'd had an epiphany: "Idleness, leisure clip is basal for our ain wellness and well-being," Headlee said.

Harmony

The title of her caller book says it all: "Do Nothing." But she argues societal pressures make doing thing difficult to do. After all, we mightiness beryllium accused of nan dreaded misdeed of laziness! "If somebody's 'lazy,' they're not earning their spot successful society, they're a bum," Headlee said.

Professor Lonnie Golden, who teaches economics astatine Penn State Abington, said, "Laziness gets a bum rap from religion, it gets a bum rap from capitalism, it gets a bum rap because we are trying to beryllium productive successful our lives."

And productivity is nan existent privilege successful America, says Golden. "The large payoffs successful nan U.S. are making yourself disposable for a promotion, aliases building your ain business from scratch. So, there's galore bully rewards from that. There's nary reward for being lazy, I deliberation it's adjacent to say. When you're astatine your precocious schoolhouse reunion, you don't want to beryllium saying, you know, 'I've been doing nothing'!"

According to a caller Wall Street Journal/NORC survey connected nan value of values (ranking them arsenic "very" aliases "somewhat" important), Americans worth difficult activity (94%) complete conscionable astir everything else, including self-fulfillment (91%), matrimony (70%), patriotism (73%), belief (60%), and tolerance for others (90%).

Even retirees person a difficult clip doing nothing. "It gets to beryllium what's called nan conspicuous busyness," said Golden. "Like, Hey, look really engaged I am, and look really overmuch clip I'm spending [on doing things]. Maybe it's volunteering. But it should beryllium okay to say, 'I'm retired. And arsenic a result, I tin beryllium lazy erstwhile I consciousness for illustration being lazy.'"

But, it's not, Headlee says, owed to a civilization of anti-laziness. "We person each been fundamentally brainwashed to judge that we person to activity hard, aliases we're not of value," she said.

Which whitethorn explicate why employers look to emotion labor who opportunity they tin multi-task. Really, what could beryllium less lazy?

Professor Earl K. Miller, a neuroscientist astatine MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, said, "We perceive this each nan time.  Businesses inquire candidates, 'Are you bully astatine multi-tasking?' And they want to hear, 'Yes!' But what they should want to perceive is, 'No!'"

Miller has sobering news for a civilization obsessed pinch juggling jobs – that it is physically intolerable for america to multi-task: "Out brains are very one-track," he said. "We tin clasp only 1 aliases 2 thoughts successful mind astatine a time. That is it. We're very single-minded."

Our mediocre brains, erstwhile struggling to multi-task, alternatively simply slow down, and make mistakes. A acold amended plan, says Miller, is to effort doing no tasks astatine all: "You know, a batch of times immoderate of your champion thoughts travel to you erstwhile your conscious mind is retired of nan way, erstwhile you let these unconscious thoughts to bubble up. And sometimes it's bully to beryllium lazy – not beryllium lazy, but to tune retired a bit, and fto these thoughts bubble up."

That proposal is simply a measurement of life astatine nan 93-year-old Institute for Advanced Study, an world investigation halfway successful Princeton, New Jersey, wherever – remarkably – doing thing does not person a bad name, says head David Nirenberg.

There is nary "typical" time astatine nan Institute, according to Nirenberg: "You tin do immoderate you want. The time is yours."

What constitutes a activity time astatine nan Institute for Advanced Study, an world investigation halfway successful Princeton, New Jersey. CBS News

When not gathering for beverage each day, scholars whitethorn return a locomotion successful nan woods, beryllium by nan pond, aliases moreover nap (!). "We each request abstraction for non-intentional activity, non-intentional thought, contemplation," Nirenberg said. "That's why weekends exist. I deliberation that's why truthful galore of our religion traditions person introduced days of rest."

"But we deliberation of that arsenic being 'lazy,'" said Spencer.

"I deliberation it's a important portion of being human," Nirenberg replied.

Not to connote that anyone's slacking disconnected astatine nan Institute; it has been an intelligence location to Albert Einstein, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and 35 Nobel laureates.

Headlee points retired that immoderate of nan productive and renowned group successful history worked a constricted number of hours per day: "Charles Dickens, Charles Darwin, Henri Poincaré, I mean, these are group who had a focused clip of 4 hours. And nan remainder of nan time, what were they doing? They were dining, they were sitting successful nan garden, they were hanging retired pinch friends."

In different words, being lazy? "To our 21st period eyes, yeah, they were being lazy," Headlee said. "To them, they were surviving their life."

And she wants each of america to commencement surviving our lives, too. Asked if she had 1 connection to stock astir laziness, Headlee said, "The astir successful animals connected nan satellite are nan laziest. Think astir really agelong lions dishonesty astir connected nan savanna. And erstwhile they request food, there's a burst of power and activity, and they get it. And past they spell backmost to lying around. If you look astatine nan apex predators, immoderate of nan astir successful type connected satellite Earth, they walk a bully magnitude of their clip doing nothing astatine all."

     
For much info:

• "Do Nothing: How to Break Away from Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving" by Celeste Headlee (Harmony), successful Trade Paperback, eBook and Audio formats, disposable via Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Bookshop.org
• Celeste Headlee (Official site)
• Lonnie Golden, Professor of Economics and Labor-Human Resources, Penn State Abington
• Earl K. Miller, Professor of Neuroscience, Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, N.J.

     
Story produced by Amiel Weisfogel. Editor: Remington Korper. 

      
See also:

• Are attraction spans getting shorter (and does it matter)? ("Sunday Morning")