This 
weekend I had a house to clean, posts to write, emails to send and new projects to plan. As I write this post, much all of what I had to do is left undone.
A year ago, or maybe less, I would have been mad at my lack of productivity. I would have scowled at the items on my to-do list, still uncrossed.
Today, I am different. I’m proud that I let my unimportant plans slip through my fingers. I laugh that I thought I “had so much to do”.
It seems so silly that we are often busy thinking about how busy we are. We get stressed thinking about all the things that have to get done. What if they don’t get done?
Instead of running errands and chasing tasks this weekend, I did whatever I wanted. I feel fully relaxed and happy and grateful.
I ignored my to-do list and did this instead…
- I walked somewhere different everyday.
- I talked on the phone to people that I love.
- I read a book for hours that had nothing to do with simplicity or blogging or productivity.
- I watched a movie in the middle of the day with my family.
- I showered in the late afternoon.
- I didn’t make my bed.
- I took a leisurely bike ride with my husband. We weren’t aiming to burn calories or track our heart rates. We just rode together.
- I lingered over a roasted red pepper and tomato sandwich alone at a small cafe.
- I stretched.
- I took a nap.
In all the things I didn’t do, I was never bored or anxious. In all the things that I did do, there was no planning or coordinating. I just let the weekend happen, and it was glorious.
My house still needs cleaning. My inbox is still full, but instead of dreading what is still left to do, I feel joy. I feel satisfied. I feel like I couldn’t ask for anything more than I already have.
In another life, I would have been grouchy and restless. I’d be figuring out how I would make up for my blissful weekend. Instead, I am basking in the glow of my un-productivity.
This post is not about shirking responsibility, but instead, identifying what is truly important. While I’ll still have to attend to my undone tasks, life is not crumbling around me because I didn’t do them yet.
If you’d like to join me next weekend or sooner, simply…
- put away your to-do list
- call a friend
- grab a book
- walk
- linger
- rest
- don’t plan or make plans
If you have “so much to do”, you might be doing things that don’t really matter. Don’t be afraid of silence or solitude. Don’t avoid lounging or lingering. Give in to it.
What would your perfect unproductive weekend look like?
I definitely get stressed when I take a break and nothing gets done. My perfect unproductive weekend would be spent sleeping, watching random movies, doing yoga, working out, and NOT having to be a parent. Being a parent of young children requires you to be productive at all times. It wears on me a lot. And I think the most important part is that this unproductive weekend take place not at my home. It’s easier to relax when you know you don’t have to clean or cook and can just take it easy.
As for the picture, I don’t find that it adds much value, in my opinion. I think for me it’s that the image is so generic.
Thanks for your feedback on the images!
Counterpoint to “Minimalist Mommi”: the images are very important (maybe she didn’t mean any image, but just that specific image…). The right visual, coupled with the words, has so much more impact. Keep using them, please…
Hi Courtney,
I love this post Courtney. I’ve been enjoying weekends lately. I loved your list of what was special about your weekend. Here’s my mini-list of one special moment this weekend:
-I visited a strange used bookstore that I’ve always wanted to see. I go by but never go inside. It’s Abraxus owned by Jim a few towns north of me. Jim has books towering every which way and a bookstore kitty who greets the customers. It reminded me of the kind of used bookstores my dad used to take me to when I was a kid.
Thanks for the inspiration to slow down. It’s well timed for me.
Cheers,
Tanja
Tanja, The bookstore sounds like the perfect place to get lost. Glad you were able to take the time!
And I managed to leave without buying anything too. 🙂
Sounds sad for Jim then.
I like the images. I tire of the simple living blogs who are all white and text. That format, to me, belies the joy of simplicity – we need color in our lives beyond black and white; like your blue accent color.
I need to do what needs to be done before I can relax – and right now, there is a lot, not generated by me but expectations of work and society – no, they are not things I can ignore and not do. I work best with a deadline – and several are looming.
My ideal weekend is spending quality time with my dogs, taking one or two for miles long walks; watching a film in a theater (though I now take ear plugs for my comfort; the decibels need to be measured!) and spending time in conversation with other people.
I always enjoy your posts. I changed my blog back to the vibrant colors I had when you visited; toning it down did not seem right; thanks for the input.
Roberta, Thanks so much for your feedback. I am glad you are using a blog design that you love and that seems right.
I understand what you mean about having a lot to do based on expectations of work and society. You are right. Those things cannot be ignored, but often they can be redefined.
I really appreciate your thoughts.
I love unproductive weekends! I just wish the to do list wasn’t still waiting for me. I got two naps this weekend which felt awesome! Naps have become one of my favorite indulgences. Next weekend I plan to be happily unproductive as well since my husband is taking me away to a cabin for my birthday present. Funny that my favorite vacations are now filled with quiet, kid-free sleep instead of lots of activities.
I personally love pictures on blog posts if they fit the post. I am a very visual person so I love getting a feeling for what is coming before I read a single word.
Faith, My nap was one of the highlights this weekend too! I wonder why we think of them as indulgent, when they are so healthy?
Happy Birthday! Enjoy your little getaway.
I love images but you have an image in your header so that’s enough for me.
As for being unproductive: I’m all for bouts of doing nothing. It makes doing something that much richer. Plus, what’s the all-fired hurry we all seem to be in anyway. Great post, Courtney.
Thanks Katie, I am leaning in that direction with images.
What is the hurry? – Great question!
There are some days when I am very busy, with lists and plans, and love it – but I certainly wouldn’t want every day to be that way. Sometimes, in the midst of a busy schedule, even one day of relaxing and doing exactly what you want is enough. And, maybe a whole weekend is better!! It is all about balance and finding your individual way of dealing with it. Knowing when it is time to give yourself a break. In that way we can stay healthy both emotionally and physically. Thanks for the post.
Hi Gayle, You are so right, but I think the challenge is that when we are so overwhelmingly busy, we can’t recognize that it’s time for a break.
For me, less is always the answer.
Courtney,
We’re on the same page. I’ve missed my deadline for my editor and my next project. Instead of frantically trying to finish I visited with my daughter and her family who were staying at a nearby resort for five days.
We actually felt we were on vacation with them, because we were! I also just published a post on how to recognize when ‘we have it all.’
I really didn’t miss a deadline because I know I already have it all. I quit chasing ‘more.’
Yes Tess! I think quitting the chase for more is the only way. The problem with more is that there is always more of it, so you never quite catch it. The chase, or race or whatever it’s called has no finish line.
I love that prioritized time with your family. They are lucky to have you.
One of the most awesome things I learned from you in our work together was to take a day off. No social media, no posts, no reading other blogs, no planning what I should be doing. Take the day off.
It’s a HUGE lesson for me and one I plan to continue to practice.
Those who have “jobs” tend to be able to work 5 days a leave it for the weekend. The self employed, the writer the self driven tend to never leave it. The practice is important to freshen each week.
It’s a wonderful life.
Jt, I am so glad disconnecting resonated with you. I think even people working 9-5 take their jobs home with them. Holding onto undone tasks from the work week can really put a damper on the weekend.
It is indeed a wonderful life, and even better, when you take the time to enjoy it.
Good for you, for taking a weekend for you. My perfect unproductive weekend definitely involves tea and books, coffee and the Sunday paper, time in nature and with my camera.
Sounds wonderful Allison.
Oh, and the pictures are nice but not essential for me.
Courtney,
Sounds like you enjoyed your “unproductive” weekend. : )
Some thoughts on images on your blog, as you asked for feedback.
I think your blog posts (and Joshua Becker’s are very similar in this too) often have fairly generic images of beautiful smiling people, that for me personally, don’t quite fit or feel very genuine. Ironically, they’re almost like a parade of the “American Dream” types that you so obviously have rejected and gone your own path.
You’re very much going against the masses (and the things the masses aspire to) in your work, so whilst the images look pretty on the surface, they don’t fit with your message, and look a bit more like people in perfume or yogurt commercials.
I like very much that there are images on your blog, I think it adds to it visually, and makes it more feminine and approachable, and I really love the look of your blog design overall. But my favourite images have been your own photos of walks you’ve gone on and so on. Sooooo much more “you” and genuine than the slightly soft focus smiley people.
If you could, having all your own images on your blog posts would for me add a whole other dimension, make it more authentic, and provide for you a discrete little avenue for people to potentially explore your other work as a photographer, if they chose to.
A couple of disclaimers to my thoughts:
1. I very much struggle with the images dilemma on my blog, and often spend as long finding an image that works as I do writing the blog post itself. I use Creative Commons images from Flickr, and I guess a part of featuring these photos and giving due credit and a click through to the photo on Flickr, is that I see it as promoting the work of fellow artists whose work I enjoy.
I sometimes use my own photos, and would like to for every post, but don’t because a) I don’t have enough of high enough quality and b) most of my photos are nature close ups, lakes and landscapes, and many posts I feel would benefit from a picture more memorable and relevant to the content of the post. I wrestle with this issue a lot though, and the main part is the amount of time I take finding images.
2. The above opinions are just mine and of course purely subjective. I’m sure others love all the images you use, and others still might say don’t have any images like Zen Habits for example.
Will be interesting to hear what others say.
Keep up the great work,
Dan
Dan, The images I use are generally from istock and do sometimes feel “commercial”. I think the softness of the images fit the blog, and that is usually not my photographic style. My photography (http://onemillionforgood.com/) is usually more bold and colorful, and doesn’t always fit what I write about.
I do plan to use more of my own images in posts, but I want to make sure that the most important thing on this blog are the words and ideas.
You’ve given me a lot to think about! Thanks for your thoughtful comment.
Do you pay for the iStock ones, if you don’t mind me asking?
Worth trying the Flickr Creative Commons, here’s the link for the Advanced Search I set up and have saved as a bookmark. You just need to type something in the search box, then explore. I then click through to an image I like and use the 500px size for my blog posts.
http://www.flickr.com/search/?l=cc&ct=0&mt=photos&adv=1&s=int
Definitely agree the thoughts and ideas are most important, and that most time should be spent on those. I wonder if everyone had blogs that were simply black Courier text on a white background with no header graphics and no images, which blogs would stand out still as the most essential reading?
(I’d hope both of ours would be among them. : ) )
Dan, I do pay for images now. I started out using Flickr, but found it really challenging to find simple clean, soft images without spending hours. I can usually find what I’m looking for quickly on istock.
Ahhh, sounds like my few days this summer while my boys were at their grandparents’ house! I got some stuff done, but mostly enjoyed the quiet house at my own pace. I hadn’t felt so relaxed in a long time. (for the record, I did miss them!) There’s a time for everything. Great reminder that our to-do lists are not what life is all about!
Thanks Jennifer. I have been thinking about doing a no to-do list experiment. I’m getting tired of living by the list!
About the picture : For me, it does’nt really had value to your article. I mean : what you wrote is clearly “self-sufficient”, interesting enough to make me feel like reading it 😉 BUT the picture gives the ambiance of the subject we’re about to read, like a symbol that summarizes your point of view and shows us where you want to lead us to.
My advice is typically based on my way of working inside : I love images as symbols BUT I know that my brain is very receptive to words before images. For example, on contrary, my husband thinks first with images, and only then come words (which means that he has to translate what he thinks/sees in his head in words).
So I suppose that a picture in a written article allows everybody to be happy :-))
Thanks Severine, The email I’ve been receiving has been about 50/50 for and against images in a blog post. We all process information differently. I really appreciate you weighing in.
This weekend I also read for hours, I planted some beautiful flowers I bought, I visited a wonderful park in my city, I had dessert at an expensive hotel-hacienda just to be able to roam around the pool and the historical building and take pictures, I had pizza with family, I had coffee with my neighbors, and I didn’t do a single chore. It felt really weird. But sometimes I remember the chores never end, and I can´t ask them permission to live.
Edith, It sounds like you had a wonderful weekend. You are absolutely correct about chores. Either we run our day, or the day runs us.
Unproductive weekends are certainly good. Often I look through my list of this to do and I only pick the things that absolutely have to get done. I set aside an hour on Saturday morning to do these, then I completely forget about the rest and just enjoy my weekend – it feels great not to have any pressure! 🙂
As for your images, I really like them. I find them subtle and relaxing. I also like the soft colors you use in your blog, I feel it adds to the information you are sharing.
Thanks Kristie, I hear from more and more people that they are creating shorter to-do lists with only the most important things on the list. So smart!
I spent my weekend much the same way you did, and I refuse to feel guilty about it. I needed 3 days of indulging myself, just to get back on track. All the things on my to-do list? They’re still waiting on me. And I’m okay with that.
Thanks for sharing! I love your blog!
Congrats Chrissy on a guilt free relaxing weekend. You deserve it.
I loved this post Courtney.
I had ‘one of those days’ a couple of Sundays ago. I currently work weekends, and have only had about three Sundays off in the last year and a half.
Waking up on that Sunday a couple of weeks ago was blissful! I walked around my house in some sort of wonderful trance. I had planned on using the day to get some work done online, but I decided I couldn’t waste the day doing something productive.
Instead I lounged around the house, I read lots of blogs on my Kindle (awesome for RSS catch ups), I had a shower in the afternoon (the best kind of shower) and I generally had a beautifully peaceful unproductive day. And I loved it.
With regards to the photos in your posts, I’ve grappled with this very same question for my blog for months. I finally settled on removing them. They just didn’t feel right. I didn’t like that I had put so much effort into writing the best post I could, only to eclipse it with a random photo from Flickr that vaguely represented my topic.
I was getting more and more compliments (on and offline) about the quality of my actual writing (which felt amazing) so that kind of put the nail in the coffin for photos on my site, as they say. I will still include in-post photos when necessary to illustrate a point, but I will no longer give each post a photo for the sake of it.
I hope that helps. 🙂
– Benjamin
Benjamin,
That is really helpful! I’ve thought about that approach too, using my own images within the post if they are directly related.
PS…you need more Sundays like the one you described above.
Exactly 🙂
And better still if they’re personal photographs – I see from your comments above that you’re hopping to introduce these more to your posts. Definitely a great idea in my opinion!
I totally do. Hopefully the weekend work will be dropped for good soon!
I dislike the photos that go along with each post but keep up the good writing. 🙂
just love this post! it is so nice to unplug and just be! Thanks for all the great ideas!
I enjoy the images!
And I am loving this post. I had a faint smile on my face while reading it. With every word, I could feel myself becoming calmer about my own to do list. Thank you for sharing your blissful weekend, it sounds lovely. My Monday was very blissful for me and I woke up today feeling a twinge of anxiety because of it. After reading this however, I feel excited to see where Tuesday brings me and what’s in store for me today.
Courtney, this post came at a perfect time for me. I/we have been working on trimming down our stuff lately, and I have been hoping that as the stuff gets trimmed down, so will the to-do list. But this has not been happening as I’d like it to, and “getting rid of stuff” ends up being on our to-do list and making us as busy as taking care of it did in the first place. (Granted, once this is crossed off, it is gone for good).
Lately I have been thinking that what I really need to do is to let go. I was just thinking this weekend that I need to learn that if most of these “to do” things don’t get done, the world will not crumble around me. And doing them will not finally make me happy…because there will always be the to-do list. I also want to figure out a way to not perpetuate this “busy-ness” with my daughters, while still teaching them responsibility.
By the way, the pictures don’t add a lot, but I think some simple graphics or the pictures keep the blog from looking too sterile.
Jill, I know what you are going through! Especially at the beginning, when you are still in the “dump stuff” phase, it seems like there is so much to do. Slow deliberate efforts will always last longer than radical change, so don’t pressure yourself to get somewhere fast.
If you are dedicated to eventually be unbusy, you will be and I love that you are looking for ways to pass that message to your daughters.
I intentionally took a more relaxed approach to this weekend. I went digital Lite. 🙂 My husband had been off for 2 weeks due to being laid off and heading back to work on Tuesday so I wanted to spend some focused time with him, most of it doing much of nothing but being together. A little grocery shopping, a little cooking, watching a bit of mindless TV, went to a movie, took a walk in the misty rain at a nature preserve, a rained out music festival! It was an awesome weekend!
Bernice
Bernice, Glad to hear your weekend was so wonderful.
I don’t have kids – so that’s pretty much my weekend! Naps are the all-powerful, ever-important life force that keeps us going. Kids or no kids.
Great post, Courtney. A reminder for some, and justification for others, that wo don’t need to always be constantly productive. Thanks!
I have a “me” day once a week! I totally disconnect from the virtual world and do whatever I feel like doing all day long! Sometimes I even do it all weekend but at least one day a week keeps me sane. It’s fantastic and actually makes me more productive in the long run!
As for the images, I agree with some of the others. I don’t find they add much value and it’s probably because they are generic, stock images. However, I don’t mind them either though. I’m pretty neutral on the topic. 🙂
I forgot to comment on the photos (as per your PS).
I find that they range from tolerable to downright distracting – a recent example of the latter is the photo of the headless couple sitting on a park bench.
I don’t think generic stock photos add to the content of your blog, and occasionally distract and/or detract from it. I usually don’t use photos unless they are necessary to convey my point, and when I do they are usually my own work, and often shot specifically for that post.
I visit your site for your content and usually scroll past the image. I understand it takes time to find an image to convey the context of your post and as you said – it may not be a task that is necessary. I would still visit your site and read your posts just as much without images. 🙂
Any advice for someone who has a spouse who won’t/can’t be unproductive? I would love to and could very easily spend a weekend just like you described, but with a husband who works all week and uses the weekends to do household projects that he insists he has to do himself, I feel guilty when he’s working away and I’m trying to sit on the couch and read a book, and there is a list of things I should get done…
It’s all a balance isn’t it.. sometimes it feels good to work, but other times you have got to let your mind be free. Sometimes its good to be orderly, other times you should let things be. One state isn’t better than the other, they need eachother–we can’t be mad at ourselves for needing unproductivity. It’s natural and just as important as productivity. Love this post, thanks for the reminder to be unproductive 🙂 It’s 1pm my time, and I haven’t started my work day, but first I’m going to savor an unproductive walk.
Courtney, thank you for a timely post. I am a Getting Things Done fan, but have felt recently I’ve got a bit obsessed with productivity. It’s been a big step to acknowledge all the things I need to do, decide to relax with a book instead & feel good about it.
I agree with other people’s comments that the images probably don’t add much value, but I don’t mind them either.
Yes I do appreciate the images. Thanks for this Blog.
Just found your blog! Love this post. I did the same sort of thing this weekend. I just had fun with friends and family. My only act close to being productive is prepare an easy dish to take to a friends house where we ate and laughed all day and night. At the end of last week, I was frazzled with keeping up with the new school year. This week, I am so much more focused on what is really important – not the busy work. I need to have unproductive weekends more often!
Thanks for the “permission” to be “lazy”! I am a consummate list-maker and feel guilty if I’m not productive. Yet ironically, I feel happiest on those days when I eschew the list and focus on the stuff that’s truly important.
Earlier today I read one of your posts about partners that may not share the urge to purge belongings and I find that my husband and I balance each other out quite well. I can easily part with our stuff and he knows how to relax and be “unproductive”. We have learned a lot from each other over these past 9 years.
I come to your blog for inspiring posts and this is another great example.
Leanne
Courtney,
I confess – I am a list maker and am always doing something. I have learned how to take my endless list and edit it down to the things I can accomplish in that day – I still get distracted and don’t get everything done, but have learned that if it was so important I would have taken care of it. I’m learning how to let it go. I’d like to learn how to live more int he now and less of anticipating and preparing for what’s next.
I like the images you select. I find them peaceful and inspiring. They don’t necessarily have to relate to the topic.
Thank you for your blog. I check now and then, but will subscribe as soon as I post this.
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