Do Something vs Having Something To Do
The importance of knowing the difference
My mother would prefer the former to the latter
It’s a thing about African mothers. They’d rather see you do something than sit idle — which ironically is doing something.
The point is you should be on your feet, busy. Nowadays, with so much automation, people do jobs that make them appear to be doing something.
In such work environments, those passionate about their job often wonder if they applied to the right company. I have heard such stories among coders. They hoped to have something meaningful to do rather than just doing something for appearance's sake.
As much as I love the song by Konshens, doing something is mostly only important if you’re going for a dance audition.
The opposite, having something to do, offers a chance for productivity orders of magnitude better and more progressive than the false façade of productivity.
Furthermore, it makes you open to interval breaks of abstraction. Thinking is a form of abstraction. By this logic, having something to do gives you time to think. Just doing something deprives you of this time.
Doing something prevents thinking.
In the fast-paced world we live in, most of us are trapped in the do-something phase. Notifications always ping, to-do lists lengthen and calendars remind you of meetings and tasks you are yet to do.
Poverty of attention makes you bent toward doing something rather than having something to do.
Here’s one thing you can do to break from this habit
It’s what I’ve been doing, and I love how it’s going.
When you wake up:
- Don’t check the unread messages you have.
- Don’t scroll through the notifications.
- Don’t go through your email.
Act, don’t react.
Do what you’d want to do, then follow up on other things later. For me, it’s run through my mental models and occasionally my home workouts. Then I can check my notifications.
If it was an emergency, they would have called. If they did not, don’t rush to see what it is.
Most of these social media platforms hijack your attention psychologically through the FOMO principle — fear of missing out.
They take away the most precious element we have presently — our attention. As a result, most of us end up doing something, instead of having something to do.
Flip the script.
Don’t just do something.
Have something to do.
