Bernard O'Shea: Why have we turned 'doing nothing' into a guilt trip?

We've convinced ourselves that every spare minute should be productive, but life isn't keeping count

'It's when I’m daydreaming that unexpected ideas quietly appear.' Picture: iStock

There isn’t a house in the country where a child who’s now over 40 years of age hasn’t heard the phrase: “Look at you sitting there doing nothing.”

My parents, thank God (and by the way, I think God has a lot to do with this), had a different attitude. If you didn’t do your homework, you and only you dealt with the consequences. If you didn’t get a job and show up on time, you didn’t earn money. If you didn’t study, that was on you. If you got a bad Leaving Cert, that was all down to what you did or didn’t do.

But here’s the key.

They never chastised my sisters or me for not “doing”. I never felt a second of guilt or anxiety growing up because they simply laid down the mantra: Do it or don’t do it. There were no repercussions either way.

They were strict about our whereabouts and our behaviour, but they never put us under any pressure to do good, bad, or indifferent. It was the greatest inheritance you could ever have in life.

If you think of the mantra, idle hands make work for the devil, it makes it out that, if you’re lazy, it’s a “sin” and you’re “morally corrupt”. But here’s the thing: “Sins” and “morals” are constructs.

Throughout the epoch, religious academics sat down and literally decided what counted as morals and sins. Sloth was up there with the big guilty heavy hitters. If you’re Irish and Catholic, God forbid you be caught doing nothing when there were (drumroll please) “JOBS TO BE DONE”.

I’ve learned to accept that, of course, jobs need to be done (even though I forgot to put out the bin again this week), but when people have to fill their lives with those chores that absolutely have to be done or else the world will collide in on itself, I can’t help but think it’s less about getting things done and more about maintaining a mental soother for their identity.

But if lashings and lashings of good old Catholic guilt fuelled the generations that “had to keep going”, now the relentless pressure of social media, career ladders, and optics makes sure every empty moment gets filled.

Is the kettle boiling? You could get eight to 10 press-ups in there. No time for the gym? You need to get up at 5am (I actually joined the 5am club and wrote about it. I did feel like a superior human being, but tired, very, very tired). Worried about your job? Upskill, come on, upskill, what are you not up-skilling?

There are times when I hate being 47 years of age. My hips don’t work anymore, my belly hangs like a blob, and I’ve achieved size AA man boobs.

But when I think of the shitty hand the generation behind me was dealt, I’m glad of my age. They live in a world where so much is expected of them, regardless of their chosen life path.

When I’m talking to anyone in their 20s now, I have to keep reminding myself not to explosively reveal: “I DIDN’T DO ANYTHING WITH MY LIFE UNTIL I WAS 30.”

Their lives, on the other hand, are filled with questions like “What does success look like for you?” and “Have you thought about your second career yet?”

And yes, all of us have those questions in our lives, but if I had been asked about success in my mid-20s, it would have probably consisted of finding a four-fingered KitKat that was entirely made of chocolate.

It’s when I’m daydreaming that unexpected ideas quietly appear. But I’ve fallen into the do-something-trap. 

How productive are my Walter Mitty-style mental adventures? The answer: Unbelievably productive.

How often have you been on a long motorway journey on your own and just turned off your audiobook, “22 foolproof ways of how to be more productive and sexier while improving your financial wellbeing” and just sat in silence?

Your brain gets an hour off. You just sit and drive.

You can’t do the jobs on your list. You can’t finish off weather-proofing the shed. You slow down as you glance at the cows and the odd man sneaking a pee on the hard shoulder while being honked by articulated lorries.

How often do you get out of the car, and what seemed important just isn’t? It’s because we’ve confused movement with progress. A full calendar, a long list of to-dos feels successful, even when none of it actually matters.

You mightn’t like it or even agree with it but, a lot of the time, the people who look like they’re doing nothing are often doing the most important work. Thinking, observing, recovering, processing, being present, and (gulp) working smarter, not harder.

The dishes will still be there tomorrow. The emails will still fly into your inbox. The grass will grow, and the weeds will always appear again, and 15 minutes after you’re lowered 6ft under the ground, people who loved you will be talking about their holidays.

My advice, for what its worth, is enjoy doing nothing because life isn’t keeping count.