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665 reviews for:
Do Nothing: How to Break Away from Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving
Celeste Headlee
3.87 AVERAGE
665 reviews for:
Do Nothing: How to Break Away from Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving
Celeste Headlee
3.87 AVERAGE
informative
reflective
medium-paced
challenging
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
informative
medium-paced
Funnily (sadly?) enough, I read a book called "Do Nothing" during quarantine. I found the second half of her book the most engaging, so if you think, "I've read Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, this isn't new information!", stick with it! Some major takeaways for me personally:
-Multitasking (especially with answering emails) is a lie that actually makes work longer—focus on one task at a time.
-"Issues arise when we try to replace what already works with tech that cannot compare with the real thing" (p. 165), namely human connection.
-Speech and human voices remain powerful—written text hasn't caught up with what our voices can convey. (See page 165 and pages 216-220.) This makes so much sense as to why I feel better about a long phone conversation, which were few and far between before quarantine.
-Slow down! Track how you really spend your time—it is often different from how you perceive to spend your time. Figure out your own time windows of focus/flow—how long can you realistically sit and be productive? Then stick to that when working, not arbitrary hours set by your employer. (More on that at the bottom of my review, though!)
-With social media, we now compare ourselves to those further away from our own social circles—"As the sociologist Juliet Schor explains, we are now trying to keep up not with the Joneses but with the Kardashians" (p. 187).
-Ignore those people at the office who boast about never taking all their vacation time; it is literally killing them. Take your dern vacation time.
-Before engaging in work tasks that you think will get you ahead (Headlee gives example of taking extra time at bedtime to answer emails in illusion that it will put you ahead for the next day), ask yourself what your intention truly is (pages 228-233)—separate the "means" from the "end."
I would have loved to read her recommendations for following her solutions "to break your addiction to efficiency without purpose and productivity with production" for people that currently work in 9-5 office jobs. Throughout the book, Headlee acknowledges her own upward mobility in the world from a single mother struggling to pay bills to a writer and speaker who gets to determine her own schedule, and I appreciated this acknowledgement of privilege, but I wish she'd given more concrete tips for those who do not have the same flexibility in schedule.
-Multitasking (especially with answering emails) is a lie that actually makes work longer—focus on one task at a time.
-"Issues arise when we try to replace what already works with tech that cannot compare with the real thing" (p. 165), namely human connection.
-Speech and human voices remain powerful—written text hasn't caught up with what our voices can convey. (See page 165 and pages 216-220.) This makes so much sense as to why I feel better about a long phone conversation, which were few and far between before quarantine.
-Slow down! Track how you really spend your time—it is often different from how you perceive to spend your time. Figure out your own time windows of focus/flow—how long can you realistically sit and be productive? Then stick to that when working, not arbitrary hours set by your employer. (More on that at the bottom of my review, though!)
-With social media, we now compare ourselves to those further away from our own social circles—"As the sociologist Juliet Schor explains, we are now trying to keep up not with the Joneses but with the Kardashians" (p. 187).
-Ignore those people at the office who boast about never taking all their vacation time; it is literally killing them. Take your dern vacation time.
-Before engaging in work tasks that you think will get you ahead (Headlee gives example of taking extra time at bedtime to answer emails in illusion that it will put you ahead for the next day), ask yourself what your intention truly is (pages 228-233)—separate the "means" from the "end."
I would have loved to read her recommendations for following her solutions "to break your addiction to efficiency without purpose and productivity with production" for people that currently work in 9-5 office jobs. Throughout the book, Headlee acknowledges her own upward mobility in the world from a single mother struggling to pay bills to a writer and speaker who gets to determine her own schedule, and I appreciated this acknowledgement of privilege, but I wish she'd given more concrete tips for those who do not have the same flexibility in schedule.
This is the most perfect thing to have read during the Covid-19 pandemic. I cannot recommend it highly enough. Its simple title belies the rich, extensive research Headlee conducted as well as the startling revelations about how our focus on productivity and equating time with money are a relatively recent invention. Read this.