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Nothing is something you can do

We members of the hoary-headed generations, who grew up with traditional values, were told by our mothers that "idleness is the devil's workshop."

Because we were thus taught, we harbor a healthy amount of guilt when we find ourselves doing ... nothing. Doing zip. Zilch. Nada. The thought of lying around snarfing the proverbial bonbons and watching Netflix is near-anathema. Yours Truly falls into this category. Most of the time I'm what they call crazy-busy. But when I do get a chance to stay home and do nothing, I start feeling guilty and restless.

Seems that folk of my ilk need to, no pun intended, chill out. Idleness -- or to put it more bluntly, screwing off -- is not only perfectly fine, but good for us, according to Brian O'Connor, a professor of philosophy at University College Dublin.

O'Connor is the author of Idleness: A Philosophical Essay (Princeton University Press, $24.95) as well as the recently posted Time.com essay, "Why Doing Nothing Is One of the Most Important Things You Can Do." According to an Amazon.com summary of O'Connor's book, he "argues that the case against an indifference to work and effort is flawed -- and that idle aimlessness may instead allow for the highest form of freedom." O'Connor goes against philosophers such as Immanuel Kant and Georg Hegel, who were dismissive of idleness, and "[presents] a sympathetic vision of the inactive and unserious that draws on more productive ideas about idleness." We should be free of caring about societal expectations to make something of ourselves, expectations that might well limit our future endeavors, he believes.

O'Connor's argument has backup, in the form of a 2014 Forbes.com post, "The Importance of Doing Nothing" by Manfred Kets De Vries, distinguished professor of leadership development and organizational change for the for-profit business school Insead. De Vries says the pressure on us to do stuff has edged out opportunities to pause and reflect, to be introspective. "Our lives have become defined by busyness," he laments, telling the story of an executive who gets 500 emails a day but avoids reading them in order to have time to think and not be bonked by info overload. Even boredom while doing nothing isn't a bad thing; this is where imagination and creativity kicks in. "But in the cyber age, where we have an almost limitless selection of entertainment and distraction to hand, it's easier to find ourselves in a state of constant busyness than it is to do nothing," De Vries points out in his piece, which, ironically, is surrounded by advertisements and clickbait.

Indeed, some of my best and most creative ideas have come to me while I'm doing nothing except daydreaming. Some of the dumbest ideas have come then, too, but be that as it may ...

You may be amen-ing this as you're reading it. Especially if you're one of those who has found that hard work hasn't brought you big rewards, only more hard work thrust on you by those who know you are good for it and who benefit by your remaining just where you are. If this is you, then hey, you should be that much more motivated to say no, brutally carve yourself some idle time and cackle wickedly, knowing that experts have provided you with an official blessing to loaf.

Of course, you may also be amen-ing this if you're a frequent loafer, and I don't mean a shoe with a penny in it. This whole idleness-is-valuable thing may be a bit far-fetched in the eyes of some who fear that everyone from panhandlers to adult children vegging out in their parents' basements may use it to clap back at folk who tell them to "get a job."

Bottom line in my book: We need balance. Work, whether done in the office or in a garden, has its benefits: It, too, is good for our health, self-esteem and happiness as well as our wallets, according to the blog Fit for Work (fitforwork.org). But all work and no doing nothing makes Jack a burned-out, unproductive boy. It says something that those bastions of Reading Material for High-Achieving Workaholics -- Time and Forbes -- would even contain articles that discuss idleness.

"If I'm so busy doing what people expect me to do, there will be no time left for what I ought to do," says that much-emailed exec in De Vries' commentary.

Good to know that sometimes, doing nothing is our best work.

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Style on 06/24/2018

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