Gap year diary - What I learnt by doing nothing for first 2 weeks?

I am on a gap year in 2021 to explore how I want to spend my 40s and craft my Life 2.0. (https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/gap-year-40-mind-weighs-options-heart-knows-sameer-srivastav/). 

This is my first update to share what I have been upto so far in my gap year and the learnings/ experiments I am kicking off.

I started my gap year on 4th Jan, Monday. An empty inbox and calendar on a typical working day! The day lay ahead like a blank slate. Beautiful!

I felt time affluent, i.e., the sense that you have sufficient time to pursue what is personally meaningful to you even if it means to do nothing. I first read about this concept in an article on ‘The Science of Well-Being,’ the most popular course ever at Yale (available free at Coursera).

Time affluence felt wonderful, yet I also felt uncertain. Now that I have 10-12 hours of free time on weekdays, how should I choose to spend it?

The first claim on time was automatic and welcome. Kids were resuming their online classes. The wifi was not working. Kids wanted to jump around, play, chat in between classes and were generally happy to see me hanging around at home beyond the morning and evening rush hours.

What about the remaining 6-8 hours? My first instinct was to fill it with many activities - reading, writing, hiking, connecting with friends and family, etc. Yet, this default rush to fill the blank spaces in life did not feel right. I started feeling curious about myself. Why am I so keen on staying productive? What if I choose to do nothing? Will habits and patterns of old life still make sense?

I decided to do nothing for the first two weeks - observe myself, write and reflect till the familiar patterns of life become unfamiliar enough to get noticed. That might hold clues to organize life 2.0.

‘Both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it’ (Walt Whitman)

As first two weeks rolled by, I started to notice few patterns.

I started noticing that whatever nagged at me in life 1.0 was primarily a symptom of time famine. Kids, self-care & development, family and friends - what withers for lack of attention can be nourished back (if we are lucky to notice in time) with the gift of time. Time seemed to have a very high marginal utility (versus money) in this life stage if I just showed up fully ready to engage in these areas. It was not about having great ideas but having time. Then, why did I not prioritize it earlier? Because there are no immediate & visible consequences. Self-care, writing, and reflection feel luxury in hectic lives; friends will be there to catch up later also, kids are getting by, and I will attend to them later and so on. Net, I kept telling myself to listen to these tomorrow - the silent and readily justifiable trade-off with today.

As I spent more time in the above areas, I felt not just happier but also at peace with myself. But, slowly, I also started to notice something disquieting in my behavior.

I would be doing something I was supposed to be very happy doing (e.g. an outing with kids on a weekday). Suddenly, I would almost unconsciously take out the phone and start fidgeting with it or checking the latest notifications. I was never fully present in a moment but was living in a state of ‘continuous partial attention’ (Linda Stone). Life on autopilot where it felt natural to want to stay on top of everything and being idle felt like a crime.

I realized that I might have been productive in life 1.0, but I was not present.

I do not want to bring this fragmented self as the foundation for life 2.0. What use is time affluence if I can choose my moments yet fritter them away with distracted attention? It felt right to explore myself better before I explore the world outside.

I decided that I will focus month one on experimenting with habits to cultivate presence & learn to be fully in the moment as the foundation for life 2.0.

‘Presence is far more intricate and rewarding an art than productivity’ (Maria Popova)

I have started three small experiments on habits to build presence,

• Morning ritual: (Why) - To be more present, why not start with mornings when I have the best chance to be fully present with minimal outside interruption? (What) Meditation and morning pages. Morning pages are three pages of longhand, stream of consciousness writing, ideally done first thing in the morning (Julia Cameron)
• One week without phone: (Why) - If I want to gain presence in the moment, my relationship with the phone needs attention (clear warning signals in the first two weeks of self-observation). (What) - Deprivation research for one week without a phone to understand what is the truly essential & unique role of phone in my life.
• Serendipity hours: (Why) - A counter to my impulse to plan and make every minute productive. Instead of searching new and unfamiliar, can I be fully present in familiar spaces as a pre-condition to find something interesting? (What) - Once a week, few hours a day, step outside the home with no agenda. ‘Walk until your day becomes interesting’ (Rolf Potts).

I will report back what I learn with these experiments. Have you tried or plan to try any of the above experiments yourself? What was the trigger? What did you learn?

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https://gapyearat40.ck.page/c51c38d858

Cheers,

Sameer Srivastav