{"id":620,"date":"2022-09-23T05:38:47","date_gmt":"2022-09-23T05:38:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sureshdinakaran.com\/blog\/?p=620"},"modified":"2022-09-24T03:22:06","modified_gmt":"2022-09-24T03:22:06","slug":"doing-by-undoing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sureshdinakaran.com\/blog\/2022\/09\/23\/doing-by-undoing\/","title":{"rendered":"Doing by Undoing"},"content":{"rendered":"

What is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare<\/em>?..echoed W H Davies<\/strong> in his seminal classic poem ‘ Leisure<\/strong> ‘. And he ends by stating,\u00a0 A poor life this if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare.<\/em><\/p>\n

The biggest lie we\u2019ve been told is that ‘ productivity is all about doing<\/em><\/strong> ‘.<\/p>\n

Working<\/b>\u00a0is\u00a0Not<\/strong>\u00a0Productivity.\u00a0<\/b>The message once(and even now) was loud and clear.\u00a0Relentless self-optimisation\u00a0<\/b>was a way to cope, but is it really?\u00a0Humans are NOT search engines<\/strong>\u00a0!<\/p>\n

There has been always something obscene about the\u00a0cult of the hustle,\u00a0<\/strong>the\u00a0treadmill<\/strong>\u00a0of\u00a0alienated insecurity<\/strong>\u00a0that tells you that the moment you stop running for even an instant, you will be flung flat on your face.<\/p>\n

Productivity<\/strong>\u00a0is not a synonym for\u00a0health<\/strong>\u00a0or\u00a0safety<\/strong>\u00a0or\u00a0sanity.\u00a0<\/strong>I will go onto add that\u00a0frantic productivity\u00a0<\/strong>is actually a\u00a0fear response.\u00a0<\/strong>It\u2019s a fear response for\u00a021st-century humans\u00a0<\/strong>in general and\u00a0millennial humans\u00a0<\/strong>in particular.<\/p>\n

Productivity<\/strong>, or the lack of it, has become the individual metric of choice for coping with the international econo-pathological clusterfuck of the\u00a0Corona Crisis.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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..<\/p>\n

Our best work will come from undoing<\/strong>\u2014from slowing down and giving ourself time and space. The Japanese call this vacuum<\/em> ma<\/i><\/strong>\u2014an empty space that\u2019s intentionally there. In Hebrew, the same concept is called\u00a0selah<\/i>. The word appears 74 times in the Hebrew Bible<\/em> as a direction to stop reading, pause, and contemplate what just appeared in the text.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s no void in your life\u2014if your life is full of constant chatter\u2014you won\u2019t be able to hear the subtle whisper when it arrives.<\/p>\n

Banish the FOMO that if you slow down, you will get left behind. What you would do is use less energy, you\u2019ll go faster, and you\u2019ll go deeper. The pedal-to-the metal mentality is the enemy of original thought. Creativity<\/em> isn\u2019t produced\u2014it\u2019s discovered. And it happens in moments of slack, not hard labor. <\/em>Yes, counter to popular thinking, but true.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

So, don’t avoid the void.<\/p>\n

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<\/em>. Sit and stare at the ceiling. Wander aimlessly through a park.<\/p>\n

Allow interior silence to oppose contemporary chaos.<\/p>\n

Sink into the rhythm of no rhythm.<\/p>\n

Step into the void\u2014where all things that never existed are created.<\/p>\n

Relentless self-optimisation is NOT<\/b> a way to cope. Humans are NOT search engines<\/strong>\u00a0!<\/p>\n

Charles Richards<\/strong> 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.”<\/p>\n

You\u2019ll find that taking your foot off the pedal can be the best way to accelerate<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ends.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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,\u00a0 A poor life this if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare. The biggest lie we\u2019ve been told is … Continue reading “Doing by Undoing”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1113,1118,1126,1125,1116,189,1107,87,1120,1121,404,1111,1115,1122,1110,1117,1109,676,1114,1112,1124,678,1119,1108,1123,552],"class_list":["post-620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-accelerate","tag-airplane-mode","tag-calendar","tag-charles-richards","tag-contemporary-chaos","tag-creativity","tag-doing","tag-fomo","tag-hard-labour","tag-hebrew-bible","tag-humans","tag-ideas","tag-interior-silence","tag-japanese","tag-leisure","tag-noise","tag-poem","tag-productivity","tag-rythm","tag-search-engines","tag-selah","tag-self-optimisation","tag-slack","tag-undoing","tag-vaccum-ma","tag-wh-davies"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sureshdinakaran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sureshdinakaran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sureshdinakaran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sureshdinakaran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sureshdinakaran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=620"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.sureshdinakaran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":625,"href":"https:\/\/www.sureshdinakaran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620\/revisions\/625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sureshdinakaran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sureshdinakaran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sureshdinakaran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}