How to Do Nothing

Sleep is fine (but it has to be “productive” deep sleep, no naps!!); self-care is fine (so long as it also involves buying things, resisting aging, etc. etc.); exercise is great (disciplining and regimenting the body). But truly doing nothing, not even birding, not even gentle walking, not even organizing , where’s the moral value in that?

Slow productivity, more than anything else, is a plea to step back from the frenzied activity of the daily grind. It’s not that these efforts are arbitrary: our anxious days include tasks and appointments that really do need to get done. But once you realize, as McPhee did, that this exhausted scrambling is often orthogonal to the activities that m

I’m often surprised at how shallow both my attention and my breathing are by default.

THERE ARE MANY “systemic abuses” to be refused at the moment, but I propose that one great place to start is the abuse of our attention.