An Invitation To Do Less

Read the same book again. All learning is associative. This means if your intent is to integrate the knowledge in the book you’re reading into your life then your best bet is to read it again.

To make notes.

To re-read those notes and to tell a bunch of people about it.

Someone else might read 3 books in the time you read your book. But if they’d just read it and done nothing else they may have felt inspired.

They may have got a little dopamine rush from finishing something. But after a day or so the knowledge would be gone and the time, given the intent, wasted.

Take a look at their book shelf and after 5 years they might have 300 books to your 100.

Chances are that you might feel deflated, compared to them you might think yourself a long way behind.

The reality is that they have wasted their time on the wrong thing.

They have focused on looking knowledgable rather than being it.

These are too often our roll models.

We are taught that success comes from racing to the future.

More hours at work, more activities with the kids, more meetings, more sales, more friends, more likes, more changes in our diet, more miles on the clock, more steps on the Fitbit.

But I challenge you to slow down and see how it works. Instead of racing to the future be more deeply in the present.

Instead of more diet changes, slow down and observe how each mouthful tastes and how each meal makes you feel.

Perhaps this connection will teach you what’s supporting you and what’s causing unnecessary suffering.

Instead of more hours and more meetings look closely. Ask yourself what’s valuable, what are you avoiding, what are you doing not for the benefit of your work but to meet assumed expectations of others?

Ask what tasks deserve your best energy and which deserve none.

Spend more time thinking about what’s effective, what’s fun and whats true and less time ticking off the “to do’s”

Instead of more steps on the Fitbit and more miles on the trainers.

Spend time walking in nature noticing how you feel start falling in love with your senses and what they can see, smell, hear, taste, touch and see if you don’t start treating yourself better and others too.

Read the same book again but only if your intention is to get more from this moment rather than to escape it.

If you want to escape it, chase harder into a future that doesn’t exist, accumulate the “dones” and forget the experience.

But this is the recipe for life long regret.