Sometimes You Have to Work Hard to Be Lazy

From Further Secrets of Adulthood: Sometimes, you have to work hard to be lazy.

Agree, disagree?

I feel this way often. I need to schedule time to be unscheduled, I need to force myself to wander, I have to reassure myself that staring into space is as useful as staring into my laptop.

I guess the idea isn’t so much “laziness” as  “leisureliness.”

I love the quotation from Gertrude Stein, from Everybody’s Autobiography: “It takes a lot of time to be a genius. You have to sit around so much, doing nothing, really doing nothing.”

It’s easy to assume that goofing off, play, and relaxation  should be spontaneous. But I’ve learned that if something is important to me, I should find a way to put it on my calendar. That way it happens!

That’s why I have some odd habits — such as to kiss my husband every morning and every night. I use the Strategy of Scheduling to make sure I make a habit of the things I want to do.

On the weekends, I schedule time to read for fun. There’s never enough time to read!

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Gretchen Rubin is the author of the blockbuster New York Times bestsellers, Better Than Before, The Happiness Project, and Happier at Home. She writes about happiness and habit-formation at gretchenrubin.com. Follow her here by clicking the yellow FOLLOW button, on Twitter, @gretchenrubin, on Facebook, facebook.com/GretchenRubin.

Photo: Gretchen Rubin