When doing less achieves more

Here’s a weird little effectiveness ‘hack’ for you:

Learn to do nothing.

I’m not saying to be lazy – defined as not doing what you want or need to do, or said you’d do.

But I am saying don’t always be doing.

We’re human beings, not human doings.

Cheesiness aside, the point is this: the more you have to do, the more important it is that you spend at least some time doing nothing.

Doing nothing gives space for your creative mind to work. For your subconscious to turn its wheels and come up with ideas and solutions you could never have achieved if you’d kept trying to force.

It’s no coincidence that Newton’s eureka moment for gravity happened when he was dozing u under an apple tree on a warm day.

Speaking of ‘eureka’, it’s no coincidence that Archimedes figured out the law of displacement when he was relaxing in a nice hot bath.

Writers famously come up with ideas in the middle of the night.

And on it goes.

What do all these have in common?

They weren’t thinking about the task at hand. They were relaxing. Doing something else – or doing nothing at all.

And in my experience, this is pretty universal.

I’ve consistently written more than 159 speeches a year, and I’ve almost never done it writing and working on speeches every day.

Probably 43 weeks out a year I’d write 3 speeches in 2 days, and not do any speech work the other 3 days of the standard work week.

Not only does this keep my creative mind working in the background – it means I’m fresh and ready to go when I have to.

For about 5 weeks in a year (scattered around throughout the 12-month period) I have to work more. One week a few years back I actually wrote 14 speeches in one week – and yes, they were all good.

Could I do that every week?

Of course not.

But I could do it that week because I’d cultivated the art of doing nothing.

Even that week, with 14 speeches to write, I would take long walks in the middle of the day. In fact, I made it mandatory to do nothing for at least 30 minutes when I’d finished one speech and before I started the next.

Most people don’t understand the art of doing nothing.

They mistake it for laziness.

But is’ something deeper – it’s creativity.

I read once about the President of a large U.S. corporation back in the ‘60s who used to say he was so busy he couldn’t get all his work done in 12 months a year – but that he could (and did) get it done in 10 months.

What he do the other 2 months?

He would sail on his yacht, no phone line, no connection to his business at all.

But he’d come back with the answers to all the problems he couldn’t solve before he went away.

Doing nothing – or at least, deliberately doing nothing related to standard ‘work’ – is how he kept sharp.

Doing nothing is how I keep sharp, too.

It’s the reason I have a higher output than any writer I know, while maintaining a high standard on everything I produce.

Oh, and I get to have a life too.

Try it sometime – do nothing for 30 minutes a day and see what happens after 2 weeks.

Anyway, if you want to reap the benefits of that high output and sharp writing and research, I’m here to help. Whether you want help with your next presentation or speech… training for your team… or improvement in your speaking presence… email me at [email protected] and let’s talk.

Alexander