As a child, when I was bored, and complained about it, my mother would always suggest a tedious task. “You can iron tea towels.” Or something similarly understimulating. Sometimes she would not bother coming up with a task and simply say “That’s good, it’s good to be bored.” My father would transfer the wisdom of ages in his family to me, and answer in English: “Go bang your head against the wall.”
I hated these predictable exchanges. One time I actually started ironing tea towels. But mostly I would just sit and be bored and, after having received those familiar replies, annoyed as well.
Now, I work in an environment, where there is no time to get bored. We plan meetings head-to-tail, without room for basic human needs like hydrating, physical movement, toilet visits. We work as abstractions of ourselves, bodyless figures that need only an internet connection to transfer knowledge and achieve Success at Work. To the point that it almost seems that Success at Work is defined by the number of meetings you’ve had, and the number of meetings you’ve planned that lead to new meetings and e-mails, that generate new e-mails, that call for new meetings, and so on and so forth (they never end, the world will end before e-mail and meetings end).
To actually get things done, we need time. Time to make things – which follows a different logic from communication time. Anne wrote about that this week. But we also need time to think. Whereas maker’s time and manager’s time is a respectable way to spend your working hours, there is never in anyone’s office schedule a time to think. And by thinking I don’t mean a structured brainstorm, but time to ponder, to drift, to wander and discover what happens when you do nothing. Pondering time.
It sounds better in Dutch:
Mijmertijd.
Today, I iron my tea towels. It’s free mijmertijd.