I’ve been seeing this book on bookstagram and after reading it, I realised that Do Nothing was what I expected How to Do Nothing to be.

Broken into two main sections, Do Nothing looks into the ‘cult of efficiency’ and how we can escape from it. The first section traces the West’s, in particular, America’s love affair with work and how it happened. In short, Weber helped popularise the idea that the Protestant work ethic (which says that hard work is a gift from God*, according to Luther) was the reason for the growth of capitalism and success of Northern Europe, while the industrial revolution caused people to think of time in terms of money, as wages began to be tied to hours worked. In this way, we’ve internalised two ideas: 1) that by wasting time, we are wasting money, and 2) our self-worth is tied to our work.

Some other salient points from this first section of the book include:

• “In many ways, I think we’ve lost sight of the purpose of free time. We seem to immediately equate idleness with laziness, but those two things are very different. Leisure is not a synonym for inactive. Idleness offers an opportunity for play, something that people rarely indulge in these days.”
• “If you don’t consciously choose a slower path, you will likely default to the pedal-to-the-metal speeds of modern life.”
• Quitting your job to work for yourself doesn’t mean that you’re immediately freeing up time – whether you have time to rest also depends on your mindset, rather than who you work for,
• We pay more attention when we believe that we’re listening to a human rather than a recording.

As for Part Two of the book, on how to let go of our “addiction to efficiency without purpose and productivity with production”, the author recommends the following:

1. Increase time perception
2. Create your ideal schedule
3. Stop comparing at a distance
4. Work fewer hours
5. Schedule leisure
6. Schedule social time
7. Work in teams
8. Commit small, selfless acts
9. Focus on ends, not means.

Now that I’ve read a few of these books about work, I find myself wondering about how this ‘cult of productivity’ or ‘cult of efficiency’ came to be in Asia. For example, Japan is notorious for long hours at work, to the extent that the term ‘karoshi’ (death by overwork) was coined. Yet Christians in Japan only consist of 1% of the population. Even if we consider the influence of the American occupation of Japan after WWII, that only lasted seven years. Could it have made such an impact, especially when most of Japan still believes in Shintoism or Buddhism?

We could also look at modern China, which has (had?) a 996 working hour schedule. Looking at China’s culture and history, it’s highly unlikely, almost impossible, for it to be influenced by Protestant culture. In that case, how did this work culture develop? Am I to think that these countries managed to buy into the cult of productivity independently of the West? Even if we say that they’ve been influenced by Western culture, how has that not been countered by the prevailing culture in the East? (Especially if you look back to the past – the Song dynasty in China and Heian period in Japan were great at leisure)

Overall, this is a pretty interesting book. As it turns out, I’ve been reading enough on the subject that not everything was new to me, but it did spark some thoughts on our cultural obsession with being productive, which I appreciated. Now that we’ve got some enforced downtime, it may be helpful to read some books to rethink our relationship with time.

*What Luther says isn’t inaccurate, but the Bible also says that God designated days of rest, so clearly there is no Biblical basis for the idea that as humans, we should be working 24/7, as the cult of efficiency proclaims.

If you like this, you may also enjoy:

Overwhelmed by Brigid Schulte – The chapter on The Busiest Gender… “Women are probably more damaged by the belief that multitasking is not only possible but good for productivity.”

Rest by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang – Did you know we can only do four hours of creative work at a time? And that not all types of rest are created equal? This book takes a look into the benefits of rest and the best ways to get it.

Indistractible by Nir Eyal – Is distraction your achilles heel? This practical book will equip you with tools to make yourself indistractible (or at the very least, less distractible).

Prosperity without Growth – the book has a brief mention about how “an economy build around constant growth, though, may not be sustainable in the long run”

Hacking Life by Joseph M. Reagle Jr – The book also mentions the article “Confessions of a Recovering Lifehacker”, which provides another interesting viewpoint.