Since it’s Friday afternoon and you’re slacking off anyway, I can’t think of a more fitting use of your time than glancing over this 10-15 minute read on our collective “busyness,” and the value of not doing anything. It struck some sort of chord for me, and it’s just very well written.

I came across it first in Tim Ferriss’s book Tools of Titans, which is really interesting in a lot of ways, but this one essay that’s kind of randomly stuck in the middle is the one part I keep coming back to. It’s been months since I read it, and I keep thinking about it, seemingly out of nowhere. A couple poignant parts:

Almost everyone I know is busy. They feel anxious and guilty when they aren’t working or doing something to promote their work. They schedule in time with their friends the way 4.0 students make sure to sign up for some extracurricular activities because they look good on college applications. I recently wrote a friend asking if he wanted to do something this week, and he answered that he didn’t have a lot of time but if something was going on to let him know and maybe he could ditch work for a few hours. My question had not a preliminary heads-up to some future invitation: This was the invitation. I was hereby asking him to do something with me. But his busyness was like some vast churning noise through which he as shouting out at me, and I gave up trying to shout back over it.

…and…

This frantic, self-congratualtory busyness is a distinctly upscale affliction. Notice it isn’t generally people pulling back-to-back shifts in the ICU, taking care of their senescent parents, or holding down three minimum-wage jobs they have to commute to by bus who need to tell you how busy they are; what those people are is not busy but tired. Exhausted. Dead on their feet. It’s most often said by people whose lamented busyness is purely self-imposed: work and obligations they’ve taken on voluntarily, classes and activities they’re “encouraged” their kids to participate in. They’re busy because of their own ambition or drive or anxiety, because they are addicted to busyness and dread what they might have to face in tits absence.

…and…

I can’t help but wonder whether all this histrionic exhaustion isn’t a way of covering up the fact that most of what we do doesn’t matter. I once dated a woman that interned at a magazine where she wan’t allowed to take lunch hours out, lest she be urgently needed. This was an entertainment magazine whose raison d’etre had been obviated when Menu buttons appeared on remotes, so it’s hard to see this pretense of indispensability as anything other than a form of institutional self-delusion. Based on the volume of my email correspondence and the amount of Internet ephemera I am forwarded on a daily basis, I suspect that most people with office jobs are doing as little as I am. More and more people in this country no longer make or do anything tangible; if your job wasn’t performed by a cat or a boa constrictor or a worm in a Tyrollean hat in a Richard Scarry book I’m not convinced it’s necessary. Yes, I know we’re all very busy, but what, exactly, is getting done? Are all those people running late for meetings and yelling on their cell phones stopping the spread of malaria or developing feasible alternatives to fossil fuels or making anything beautiful?

Read the whole thing here. Happy Friday.

– Sam

This is a living document, and something I add to as I go, usually when I come across a good track that fits the mood on Pandora. But in general, when I sit down to write — either at the home office before sunrise, or at the Chipotle at 32nd and Lowell during the lunch hour — I put on this bad boy.

I like it because it’s got that murky, weird vibe that seems to help keep my mind moving forward, and the lyrics, in most cases, are either ancillary or nonexistent. I always find it difficult to produce words when you’re fighting other words in your ears.

Anywho, here it is. It gets me in the mood.

With no particular agenda or reason, here’s what I’m digging right now.

1. This Cover

I’ve been yelling about the Wood Brothers for a couple years, but I just stumbled across this Jam in the Van video. Quite pleasing to the ear, in my opinion. I occasionally wish I was Jano Rix.

2. This Guy’s Rules for Life

They read in a strangely pleasing way; a subtle balance of humor and earnestness, and they come across as suggestions, not commands. My favorites are:

Assume your temperament will always be somewhat childish and impatient, and set your rules accordingly, knowing that you cannot abide by rules for rules sake.  Hope to leverage your impatience toward your longer-run advantage.

And:

When shooting the basketball, give it more arc than you think is necessary.  Consistently.

Something to think about.

[otw_shortcode_quote border_style=”bordered”]Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of a man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man.

And now the forces marshaled around the concept of the group have declared a war of extermination on the preciousness, the mind of man. By disparagement, by starvation, by repressions, forced direction, and the stunning hammerblows of conditioning, the free, roving mind is being pursued, roped, blunted, drugged. It is a sad suicidal course our species seems to have taken.

And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about. I can understand why a system built on a pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for this is one thing which can by inspection destroy such a system. Surely I can understand this, and I hate it and I will fight against it to preserve the one thing that separates us from the uncreative beasts. If the glory can be killed, we are lost.

– John Steinbeck
East of Eden[/otw_shortcode_quote]

This V-Day, ditch the old standards and try one of my modern love lines instead:

• “I love you like white millennials love ‘Regulate’ by Warren G Feat. Nate Dogg.”
• “I love you like moms loved Oprah in the nineties.”
• “I love you like progressives love Beyonce.”
• “I love you like white girls love Ellen.”
• “I love you as much as Trump supporters love saying ‘it’s not a permanent ban.'”
• “Life with you is so much better, similar to how each film would be better with the inclusion of Tom Hanks.”
• “I hope our time apart always goes as quickly as the MLB offseason. Pitchers and catchers report soon.”
• “I love you like Texans love Texas.”
• “I love you as much as non-Texans hate Texas.”
• “Quitting you is harder than quitting Facebook.”