Monthly Archives: September 2017

Time well wasted

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I have a weakness for signs. Not the cosmic type, I don’t believe in those. I think when people look for signs, what they’re really doing is looking for confirmation for things they have already decided or already know to be true in their hearts. They see what they want to see and attribute meaning so that they get the confirmation they need.

No, the signs I’m talking about are physical signs, words written on a slab of wood or a sheet of metal. I have two hanging on the wall over my desk in my office. One says, “Wake up. Kick ass. Repeat.” and was a gift from a dear friend. Looking at it makes me feel strong and, if not fearless, then at least less afraid. The other one was a birthday present from my family and it says, “Of course I talk to myself. Sometimes I need expert advice.” It makes me laugh, and the truth be told, I do talk to myself a lot.

Not too long ago I saw a sign in a shop that said, “Every day without laughter is a day wasted.” I was drawn to this sign because I truly believe in laughter. Laughter is so important. It’s healing, it’s therapeutic, it’s the glue that keeps families together, and it’s fun. But there was something about this sign that just didn’t feel right. I realized it was the part about days wasted.

Let me set one thing straight. No day is ever a waste of time, regardless of whether it’s filled with joy, sadness, stress, or just boredom. Every day is important, a piece of the puzzle that makes up your life and who you are. We can’t go through life always laughing. Some days I, at least, definitely don’t feel like laughing and those days are important too. A day without laughter may not be a fun day, but it doesn’t necessarily make it a bad day, and definitely not a wasted day.

This whole concept of wasting time gets to me. Ever since industrialization, productivity has become a mantra; it’s become something to strive for in everything we do. Organizations are supposed to be productive, individuals are supposed to be productive, and we streamline to the point of maximizing productivity at all times. We are led to believe that anything less is a failure to live to our maximum potential. This, however, is not a truth, it’s not a law of nature; it is just the way we are conditioned to think in society. We constantly seem to weigh everything’s worth instead of letting things be for the sake of being.

As I write this, I’m lying on the couch, nursing a cold, and thinking about how I should be using my time. I’m definitely not feeling very productive. Instead of just focusing on getting better, a part of me feels pressured to at least make an effort and answer emails – even though I’m feeling too tired to work – because aren’t we sort of expected to work anyway, even when we’re sick? Even though resting will make us better faster? Productivity is so ingrained also in my consciousness that even I, who research these things, get filled with self-doubt if I don’t feel I live up to social expectations.

Well, I’ve been relatively successful at resisting the temptation to work. I have taken a well-deserved rest, and let me tell you what happened: As I lay here on the couch doing nothing, I got bored. My mind started to wander and I started thinking about that book proposal I’m supposed to be working on but just haven’t had the peace of mind to get my head around. I started to see how I want to structure the book and jotted down a preliminary table of contents. This gave me such an energy boost that it inspired me also to write a blog post. Hooray for so-called wasted time!

P.S. And yes, I’m going to write another book! I’ll keep you posted, so stayed tuned!

The discipline of a master procrastinator

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I’ve never really thought of myself as disciplined. I’m actually a master procrastinator. Sometimes it can inexplicably take me forever to get around to doing something – inexplicably because the things that don’t get done are usually really not a big deal. They wouldn’t necessarily take very long to do at all if I just got around to them.

So imagine my surprise when people started telling me they really admired my discipline. It all started when I was on maternity leave with my first child and taking social psychology classes. Since I was living abroad without a network of friends and relatives to help, I couldn’t leave my baby and actually go to class, but I would study the literature at home and then go to the university to take the exams. And this is what I did: I would spend time with the baby in the morning and when I put her down for her nap I would devour as much of the course literature as I could until she woke up. Then I would spend time with her again until her next nap and then I was off again to the world of group dynamics, prejudice, dialogue, disorder… you name it I was reading it. I was tired and my house was literally a mess, but I loved every minute. Studying social psychology was something I had wanted to do for a long time, but it also provided a pretty good counterweight to the sometimes lovely and oftentimes uneventful days at home with a baby.

I was told that I was amazing, so disciplined.

Another time I heard this was when I was working on my PhD at home in a different country than the university where I was enrolled, and also finished within the designated time. People would wonder how I had the discipline. Some people talked about how they would never be able to write a doctoral dissertation at home because they would get too distracted. Well, the discipline part really wasn’t that hard. After I enrolled as a PhD student, my job was suddenly to read again and think, as much as I possibly could. The things that might have distracted me at home, were things like laundry and dirty dishes and other never ending tasks that, to be honest, I didn’t want to do anyway. No, I didn’t feel particularly disciplined; I was just doing what I really wanted to do.

The other day I attended an event where I heard Paul Auster being interviewed. What an interesting man. Paul Auster, when asked about having the discipline to write every day, said that he always thinks that’s an irrelevant question. Because it’s not a matter of discipline, it’s a matter of wanting or not wanting to do what you do. If you really love what you do, discipline isn’t an issue.

So what do we learn from this? Well, maybe if you like what you do you don’t have to worry about discipline, but if you have to force yourself to do what you’re supposed to be doing, maybe you don’t really want to do it in the first place?

But I also have to say, procrastination really isn’t such a bad thing. It’s not the enemy of productivity, nor the opposite of discipline. There is a study that shows that procrastinators are, in fact, more creative than people who don’t procrastinate. I mean if you think about it, maybe procrastination is a way for creative people to allow themselves a break to actually reflect. We don’t generally get a lot of time to reflect in society, even though we know that you need to have time to reflect to actually be able to create.

So on that note, I think I’ll have a cup of coffee and procrastinate for a while. No discipline needed for that either.

Young people are lonely. Is this our doing?

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Being the mother of a teenage girl, a comment I heard the other day at a conference really caught my attention. It was a person in the audience, and the comment was that 25% of young Norwegian girls are reported to be lonely. Well, I haven’t been able to verify this number, but I did some digging and it turns out that this is not only a Norwegian phenomenon. It turns out, that studies have shown that teenagers and young adults in other places too, like the UK for example where a study has recently been conducted, are reported to feeling very lonely; lonelier than many elderly feel and we already know that is a problem. In one article the term ‘generation lonely’ had even been used.

The main argument – which has also been contested – is that the Internet and social media are the reason. Apparently, people in this age group rely more on social media to interact with friends than actually seeing them in person. And by now we know that the way we interact over social media is quite different from how we communicate with each other when we see each other face-to-face.

If you ask Sherry Turkle, author of Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other, this is a major problem. One thing is the flat and one-sided personas we present to the world through social media. They affect both our own identities but also the identities of those reading our updates due to the way we compare our own messy realities with the edited lives presented by our social media friends. Another problem is that we lose the ability to really be on our own with ourselves and our thoughts, which is a good thing to be able to do for emotional and mental well-being.

Well, that’s one aspect. Another is unemployment among young adults that many countries struggle with. In another presentation I heard, young people today are also known as the ‘Net generation’. People apparently associate them with things like flexibility and precarious work, arguing that this is the way they want it. Apparently they are supposed to lead us into the future where meanings of work are going to be completely different than today. But in a study conducted in Sweden, it is young people who are most negatively affected by insecure and flexible job markets. And when asked, these young people say that all they really want is a good and secure job so that they can earn a living. Not having a job can be a very lonely experience.

Both of these aspects are definitely relevant, but I’m struck by a thought. What also comes to mind is the way we organize our children’s lives, before they become lonely young adults. Due to the false perception that the world has become a more dangerous place (despite terrorist threats and the media going wild on this topic, studies have shown that the world is actually a safer place now than it has been previously), parents limit how far they allow their kids to roam. In my neighborhood I don’t ever see kids playing in the street, like I did with my friends when I was a kid. So if kids are to see each other, play dates need to be organized first. This, in addition to the professionalization of all things that should be fun (i.e. kids’ hobbies), seem to fill up our children’s schedules to the point where it becomes difficult for them to hang out with friends after school because everyone is constantly somewhere at some sort of training, club or class that just can’t be missed.

Hmm… it kind of makes you wonder: is social media really at fault? Or are we active participants in creating lifestyles for our kids where they don’t have much choice but to limit their interactions to Internet solutions? After all, as parents we set the standards.