The myth of being productive

the joy of simply dreaming

I’ve always loved a good skive.

At school, I was the one staring out of windows. In a boring lesson, I would mentally switch off. Sometimes I would derately think of a specific memory, try to inhabit the mood of it again, but often I would just stare. Relax my eyes. Blur my vision like I would at the hidden 3D picture at the back of the Daily Mail that plonked through the letterbox every weekend when I was a child. I don’t know what this achieved in the moment apart from Jodie!s and being placed in the bottom set for maths (yawn), but I remember thinking even then that my time here was precious. No, you are not going to fill my mind with trigonometry…ooh, look: clouds.

I felt both relieved and annoyed when Rishi Sunak proposed making maths compulsory at school until eighteen. Thank-goodness-my-school-days-are-done followed by how-dare-they. Of course, it’s hardly a surprise that the Prime Minister of a country whose productivity is down wants to turn us into multi-functional robots. The more skills we have, the easier it is to switch jobs/industries if our current one becomes obsolete. AI is coming to steal our jobs, so let’s equip the proles with the skills we deem necessary.

But surely the first thing artificial intelligence will master is maths. Right? What’s the point in trying to keep up with the technical abilities of a computer, whose very existence is built on numbers and code?

There’s something they absolutely cannot beat us lowly humans at though…(yet).

Dreaming.

AI would not understand the point of staring out of windows. It would not know to pull up a specific memory from one’s brain to inhabit for a moment unless there was a clear reason for bringing up that memory. Computers/AI/code etc run on algorithms and rational ‘thinking’. What the hell is the point of dreaming?

Perhaps there is a reason my brain likes to daydream or inhabit a memory. Perhaps whenever I go back to those old conversations I had around the turn of the millennium, those short-lived moments that fed on intensity of feeling, there is a method in this that I cannot know. But herein lies the beauty. I do not know the whys of my own head. Deep beneath my conscious mind that knows it is Friday or that I shouldn’t have more than three coffees a day, there is a thick, black, unconscious sea that really pulls the strings.

What was the point of sneaking out of my bedroom at midnight and running across fields to get into a waiting car? What was the point of those teenage hours I spent with my friend in a park watching the boys playing football? Why does the memory of going out with £20 in my pocket and knowing it would last the night bring comfort? And why is my favourite thing to do in summer lying on the grass, staring up at trees and sky? No music. No talking. Just staring and doing nothing at all.

I do not know the why of any of that. All I know is that those tiny moments contain a fat chunk of my happiness, and they have morphed from truth into fiction by my writing their moods into books published by Penguin and sold on bookshop tables. How’s that for productive.

Dreaming is what makes us human. It’s a skill only we have. There is no algorithm for the dreams we have at night or the ones we see out of windows. It’s organic and random and the source of all creativity. It’s utterly unpredictable. How terrifying for modern governments (and why they try to harness our unconscious desires to make us dream of things that can be mass-produced and controlled - but that’s a whole other post). We are so used to the notion of dreaming that we no longer pay it any attention, but really, it’s the most wild and bonkers thing. A world you can inhabit inside your own head? Without needing to travel? So often we try to dull our thoughts and senses, when they are an integral part of our existence.

I love doing nothing. Social media often celebrates our capitalist world’s obsession with productivity with posts like Up at 5am today and have already worked out, done a food shop, manifested in my linen and gold-foil journal (ad-affiliate link here), cooked and eaten breakfast, said ‘you are worthy’ in the mirror five times, go me!, and the “luxury” of doing nothing is reserved solely for Sunday, for the (enraging) use of the verb ‘pottering’, for a ‘slow day’.

Every day for me is a slow day. It may sound weird, but if I reach evening and have had no time for staring, I do not consider that a successful day. So much of my job takes place in my head - I am about to embark on my third or fourth (I’ve lost count) draft of book 3, and daydreaming is an essential component in the work of bringing life to fictional people - but I’m not talking about that. That’s work. That’s money. However much I love writing, it still must pay the bills. I mean daydreaming about nothing at all.

I’ve always struggled with meditation, unable to follow the instructor on the yoga class who says to close my eyes and picture a meadow with trees and birds and... I can’t go there. I don’t have an overactive mind but I can’t picture things or moods like that on request. My mind, like me, is not very obedient. It likes to go where it wants.

I realised not long ago that this pointless staring is my meditation. It’s also my default state. I am not someone who crams things into the diary and then needs to carve out time to meditate. Unconsciously, I do it the other way round. If something is happening in the morning, very rarely will I book anything in for the afternoon. I’m busy, even if technically not. And on a weekend, if something is on a Friday night then Saturday night stays free. Same with daytimes. If I’m out one day with my family, the next we spend at home. There is no rest in a cluttered dance card and I hope my sons grow up appreciating the joy of empty time. Time for what? Who knows! Sit, be bored, see what your imagination magics up. Make time for yourself because we are already given very little. Draw around it a fancy border in red pen.

how many years we get if lucky - that’s your lot

What can happen if we cram our days with tasks and chores, activities, things that must get done right now? Burn-out. We crack and break down. And because we’ve allowed our mindset to think that BUSYBUSYBUSY means good, all we can see is the jobs piling up while our minds try to heal.

Governments treat us as robots. Their statistics must always think of their bottom line. A country’s population will always be ‘XX million’, but that figure does not account for individuals. We are just part of a blob, and when we die, a newborn takes our place in that blob. We pay taxes to live in a civilised society with all the benefits that brings, but the job of nurturing our minds is far too personal.

The irony is that if we are properly rested, we are more likely to be productive. Our stress levels will always be more easily managed if we make room for downtime in which to breathe. Guard it, respect it, draw around it a fancy border in red pen.