Tag: Undoing

Breaking the Myth: Productivity by Undoing!

 

Sorry to sound contrarian here. As the defaults in our culture have made out that productivity is all about doing. And that is a big big lie! And our undoing.

 

The co relation here is NOT about inaction and undoing. “Sometimes sitting and doing nothing is the best thing you can do,” reminds Karen Salmansohn, best selling author of THINK HAPPY. Take some time each day to sit and just be present with yourself and your thoughts and feelings.

 

Slack is not taboo, it’s a good thing. Our best thoughts and ideas come from moments of slack, not from a flurry of activity and busyness. Instead of your phone, put yourself in airplane mode. Wander, drift, escape, discover, resolve..step into nothingness, the proverbial void, because that is where things that didn’t or don’t exist get created. There has to be a void so that we can create. So, don’t avoid the void.

 

The subconscious mind is where we store our strongest emotions. That is where life’s script gets written. As we calibrate our state of mind and body into doing nothing, we release the subconscious into the beyond where it blends the old and the new, stitches up unexplored associations and calibrates the new arithmetic to the old to discover unexpected positive outcomes.

 

Slowing down is a hack to go faster. Using less energy. And to go deeper. Never mind the naysayers. The rubber needing to hit the road( the default expectation) at all times, actually is a speed breaker and slows down if not stops the creation of original thought.

We are neither robots nor a manufacturing plant. Creativity isn’t produced..you run into it, you discover it. And that happens during moments of slack, not hard labour.

 

Lounge, stare into nothingness, interrupt set patterns. Permit your interior silence to take over contemporary chaos. Ideas don’t come with an ETA attached.

 

Contrary to what we have been brainwashed about, our best work will come from undoing– by slowing down, by giving ourselves space and time. Morabor(Latin for slow down). The Japanese call this intentional vacuum ‘ ma ‘.

 

In the perennial quest to conform and comply, and trying to beat everyone else doing the same, we happily concede defeat and give up on blazing our own trails. Running the ‘ also ran ‘ race. You might be doing okay by normal standards, but you still feel restless, bored, and limited. True success is playing by your own rules, creating work that no one can replicate. Trying to be the best will limit you to someone else’s definition of success. Don’t be the best, be the only. Only is much better than being the best. Whether you are Mark or Taylor, tailor your own mark. Make competition irrelevant.

Give into ONLYNESS. It’s next to GODLINESS!

 

The best way to accelerate is to take the foot off the pedal.

 

ENDS

Doing by Undoing

What is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare?..echoed W H Davies in his seminal classic poem ‘ Leisure ‘. And he ends by stating,  A poor life this if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare.

The biggest lie we’ve been told is that ‘ productivity is all about doing ‘.

Working is Not Productivity. The message once(and even now) was loud and clear. Relentless self-optimisation was a way to cope, but is it really? Humans are NOT search engines !

There has been always something obscene about the cult of the hustle, the treadmill of alienated insecurity that tells you that the moment you stop running for even an instant, you will be flung flat on your face.

Productivity is not a synonym for health or safety or sanity. I will go onto add that frantic productivity is actually a fear response. It’s a fear response for 21st-century humans in general and millennial humans in particular.

Productivity, or the lack of it, has become the individual metric of choice for coping with the international econo-pathological clusterfuck of the Corona Crisis.

Have you taken the path not trodden, step into a void and, by design decide NOT to do anything? And then witness something strange happening? Ideas begin to flow, collide, offering solutions, relief, succour, insights, inspiration, closure..

Our best work will come from undoing—from slowing down and giving ourself time and space. The Japanese call this vacuum ma—an empty space that’s intentionally there. In Hebrew, the same concept is called selah. The word appears 74 times in the Hebrew Bible as a direction to stop reading, pause, and contemplate what just appeared in the text.

There is no preamble or drum roll when ideas arrive. There is no parade. If it’s big, it is not going to wield a megaphone and yell from the rooftop. At first glance, the big thing actually looks quite small. If there’s no void in your life—if your life is full of constant chatter—you won’t be able to hear the subtle whisper when it arrives.

Banish the FOMO that if you slow down, you will get left behind. What you would do is use less energy, you’ll go faster, and you’ll go deeper. The pedal-to-the metal mentality is the enemy of original thought. Creativity isn’t produced—it’s discovered. And it happens in moments of slack, not hard labor. Yes, counter to popular thinking, but true.

During those moments, it may appear like nothing is happening, but appearances mislead. Still waters run deep. As you stare out into the nothingness, your subconscious is hard at work, consolidating memories, making associations, and calibrating a new math while marrying the new with the old to create unexpected combinations.

So, don’t avoid the void.

Mute down the noise, just for a little bit, throughout the day. Give yourself permission to lounge in bed after waking up. Put yourself in airplane mode. Sit and stare at the ceiling. Wander aimlessly through a park.

Allow interior silence to oppose contemporary chaos.

Sink into the rhythm of no rhythm.

Step into the void—where all things that never existed are created.

Relentless self-optimisation is NOT a way to cope. Humans are NOT search engines !

Charles Richards on productivity: “Don’t be fooled by the calendar. There are only as many days in the year as you make use of. One person gets only a week’s value out of a year while another gets a full year’s value out of a week.”

You’ll find that taking your foot off the pedal can be the best way to accelerate.

Ends.