Notebook for
Autopilot: The Art and Science of Doing Nothing
1: That Loathsome Monster Idleness
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emerging from modern neuroscience, it may be no accident that as our working hours increase, our mental well-being and physical health decrease.
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Why does study after study show that we are more stressed, have worse family relationships, weigh more, and are less happy because we are working too much? Does it seem odd that as the time management industry sells more books, the number of hours we work increases? To quote Bertrand Russell, “can anything more insane be imagined?”
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What this means is that multitaskers cannot filter out irrelevant information because their attention is overloaded with whatever tasks they are not doing. In other words, a multitasker cannot actually distinguish between relevant and irrelevant information because the multitasker does not really know what they are doing at any given moment.
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Multitasking is compulsive behavior that actually leads to a condition very similar to adult ADHD.
2: Someone Else’s Noise
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Yet we feel obliged to risk our long-term health in order to work extremely hard at jobs we don’t particularly enjoy in order to buy things we don’t particularly want.
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The precuneous seems to be involved in self-reflection. One of the best ways to get to know yourself is to find a quiet or comfortably noisy place, stare at the sky, space out for a
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while and see what the precuneous gets up to.
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The ability to reflect on your current situation, your past, and your future are all intimately related. People who have the luxury to spend time doing this by being idle tend to be more creative, and to have better mental health in general.
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The butterflies only come out to play when all is still and quiet. Any sudden movements and they scatter.
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Fortunately, the only way to attain this optimal level of default mode activity is to put your feet up, find a nice pillow, lie back, and let go of task-oriented activity. Looking at great art, listening to your favorite music, and doodling may help facilitate this process.
3: Aha! moments and Self-Knowledge
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All the clocks struck at the same time because the clocks were not being wound.
4: Rilke and the Idle Examined Life
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“The lazy man does not stand in the way of progress. When he sees progress roaring down upon him he steps nimbly out of the way.” —Christopher Morley, “On Laziness”
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The common sense notion about “workaholics” is that they find idleness and inactivity to be unbearable because they are escaping emotional pain through constant work.
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We start to identify more with the phone in our pockets than the mind in our heads.
6: Revolution or Suicide
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An underlying assumption of productivity and time management is that the natural way human beings work must be suppressed for the sake of organization and productivity.
7: The Signal Is the Noise
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We do not know at this point what the long-term effects of ADHD medication are, especially on healthy young brains. It is entirely possible that some form of adaption could occur, and less natural dopamine would be produced, which could lead to problems such as depression later in life.
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I suspect that there is a strong cultural and economic component to the increasing rates of ADHD.
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