No, not your Idol – although it may be that, too. But what’s your idle? Each day naturally gives us idle moments. How do you spend them? What activities do you thoughtlessly gravitate toward doing when an idle moment hits? What’s your idle?
Just like driving in stop-n-go traffic, we can easily spend a very significant portion of our day idling. How we spend those moments not only has a huge impact on the person we become, but they also have a way of impacting how productive the rest of our day is.
And instead of carefully embracing my idle moments with purpose, I too often unwittingly surrender these precious, potentially pivotal moments of my day to the whim of careless habit. Quiet addictions disguised as words like “multi-tasking,” “decompression,” “connectivity” and “efficiency”…slowly sucking away my life.
For instance, when I’m at work, my idle is checking email. My day idles around my email inbox. It’s the first thing I check when I start work. It’s the last thing I check before I shut down. It’s what gets a quick (and often longer) glance while slow internet pages are loading or during a slow part of a meeting. I check it in between every task. I’m constantly reacting to it. My pace and schedule is often dictated by it. My email is my idle. I’m constantly present in my inbox, just not necessarily with the person or task in front of me.
At home, it’s the TV. Anytime I’m at home and hit an idle moment my brain feels this urge to grab the remote control and see what’s on. At the end of the work day when I’m all sputtered out, TV is my idle. While waiting for dinner to finish cooking, relaxing for a moment, eating a snack or simply deciding what we want to do tonight – the TV comes on (and usually stays on). And when I hit a commercial break (one where I can’t fast forward through it), I even flip to the channel guide and find something else to watch to fill that idle moment. TV is my idle.
Everywhere else, my smartphone is my idle. If I’m standing in line at the grocery store, waiting in the doctor’s office, waiting at a traffic light, walking to a meeting or even waiting for a commercial break to finish – basically, anytime I have an idle moment – I reach for my front right pocket. I don’t know how many times each day I find myself in the middle of opening my phone and not really knowing why. I flip through endless pages of interesting apps, fun games, social networks and email…just because. My cell phone is my idle, too.
Are these idle habits really helping me decompress, accomplish more tasks or be more efficient? Actually, I’m beginning to realize that they do the opposite. They also do a great job of making me feel much busier than I actually am.
Do I need these idle habits for entertainment? A much needed distraction from the grind of the day?
No. Actually, what I really need is rest – not distraction. I need silence – not entertainment. I need a moment to take a deep breathe and contemplate my existence — what I’m doing and where I’m going. But such fragile moments are easy prey for ravenously bad, idle habits.
Do you ever get the feeling that instead of you living your life, it feels more like life is just happening to you? I’ll let you in on a little secret: It’s not because you have too much on your plate or not enough vacation days. It’s because of bad, idle habits.
These brief, idle moments – more often than we realize – turn into divergent distractions. They keep our head firmly in a million places at once. They steal our focus from the task at hand – not just from being productive at it, but from truly enjoying it. I am endlessly reacting or getting unexpectedly pulled into something via email, TV or smart phone that isn’t nearly as important as what I had hoped to accomplish today. 5 minutes here. 10 minutes there. Instead of using the natural idle moments in life to rest for a moment, find inspiration and reorient myself to the goals of the day, I pack them with unimportant to-dos and spontaneous distractions.
I’ve decided to change my idles — and change my life.
I’ll write more soon on how I’m doing that.
