One of my guests this week has got me thinking. In author Celeste Headlee's new book, she writes about how we need to relearn how to appreciate idleness and leisure and rethink our relationship with work and productivity.
It’s something many of us have an impromptu trial with over the last five weeks.
Lockdown arrived pretty abruptly but, after the initial jolt, the enforced slowdown has been an unexpected joy for me.
We’re a busy family. We’ve got jobs, and kids with school, and an enthusiasm for after-school activities – dance of many descriptions, and football, and swimming and - you get the idea.
It feels like we’ve simply got too much on our plate.
So we’ve often wondered what our family life would be like if we were prepared to endure the kids howls of outrage and say sayonara to a good proportion of our extra-curricular activities.
Now we know.
Spending time together and being vaguely bored is ok – it’s led to a lot of fun and giggles, walks and bike rides, and talking nonsense.
It’s incredible not to have to organise the morning and evening family life like a fully-fledged logistics company.
The slow life suits me - maybe a little too much.
I haven’t felt guilty that we’ve let the day’s flow without much ambition. We’ve done what’s needed to be done – work, school work, a bit of exercise and fresh air.
I haven’t made bread, joined a plank challenge, found a new hobby or learnt to play an instrument. Some days we’ve not got dressed.
And it’s the not feeling guilty that’s made it great.
Normally, like many people I feel like I’m winning when I tick things off a list. We tend to associate fulfilment, success, and satisfaction with achieving something tangible. Idle time is wasted time - right? Busy-ness is almost a competitive sport.
I may not have a list covered in ticks of the things I accomplished during lockdown, but I’ve spent time thinking about how we live a calmer life out the other-side.
I don’t think we’ll manage to cut many of the weekly activities out of the schedule, but we’ll try, and we’ll make sure we enjoy the times in-between – by doing absolutely nothing. Guilt-free.
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