#128 - Doing Shit
Something, nothing, and liberating
So much rubbish gets done. Our days are filled with it.
Sending emails, having meetings, doing shit for the sake of it.
Some things need doing, of course, the issue is everything else.
And the big problem with the shit that doesn’t need doing: It creates more shit that doesn’t need doing.
Such is life.
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Something
The human tendency is to do something. We keep ourselves busy.
Action, in itself, is great- essential in fact. The issue is it’s rarely the right action. Usually it’s anything but. We busy ourselves with nonsense.
There’s a wonderful little book on this called Parkinson’s Law. The law, for those not familiar, is:
“Work expands to fill the time available for it’s completion.”
It sounds basic, but meditate on it and you’ll see it’s deeply profound.
There’s a section in the book that highlights our point here perfectly. Parkinson shares the below data for headcount in the British Colonial Office:
Read the last two sentences.
During the 19 year period, in which the number of colonies were considerably diminished, headcount ballooned.
What on earth were they doing all day?
Administrating; work for the sake of work.
And let’s be honest, they’re not alone. The phenomenon is the rule rather than the exception. We’re drowning in busy work.
Nothing
Often the right action is doing nothing at all.
Yet it’s uncomfortable.
Napoleon, famously, would wait three weeks before opening non-urgent correspondence. He found things resolved themselves by the time he got to them. Isn’t that wonderful?
Could you do that? Read none of your incoming correspondence for three weeks? I expect the mere thought of it makes you shiver.
We can take it a step further.
Not only are interventions often not needed, and therefore a waste of time, they’re harmful.
In medicine it’s called Iatrogenics, meaning caused by the healer. Modern practice is rife with it. The medical intervention does more harm than good. As Blaise Pascal once said: “All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
And yet look at us…
Compulsively checking and sending emails, and generally filling our days. What has it all come to?
Liberating
It’s actually a very liberating idea.
So much time is governed by a need to get things done. But there’s really no need to worry. Most of it doesn’t matter anyway.
I find, without fail, the more I do in a given week the less I get done. It’s the weeks with white space that make the difference. That’s where the breakthroughs come.
Amos Tversky once said:
“The secret to doing good research is always to be a little underemployed. You waste years by not being able to waste hours.”
I suspect the same is true of life.
Blink and you’ll miss it.
What I’ve Been Reading 📚
Lenin the Dictator by Victor Sebestyen
A wonderful book on a complex character. Hilarious in parts- quite an achievement given the appalling nature of the story.
Thank you Hec Alexander for the recommendation!
In Memoriam by Alice Winn
Such a great book. A tale of two public school boys in love and thrown into the First World War. Incredibly haunting and beautifully written.
Thank you to my Mother for the recommendation!
A Final Thought 💡
It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?
- Henry David Thoreau