The Greenroom

Dinner
is generally the only meal a family can spend together as school and
work often mean everyone leaves the house at different times in the
morning and lunch obviously isn't an option. But dinner, ah yes,
dinner... everyone is home and has an opportunity to spend some time
together before departing separate ways for soccer practices,
rehearsals, honey-do's and other evening activities.

I imagine
most people wish they could spend more time with their families and
having dinner together each night is an ideal way to do that - to block
out the rest of the world and interact with each other. Here are eight
ways to make eating dinner together as a family more meaningful.

1. Turn off the TV.
Focus on your family, not the TV. Watching TV during dinner 1. is a
crutch because you don't know what to talk about or 2. tells your kids
what's on TV is more important than them. Harsh, perhaps, but it can be
perceived that way. It's family dinner, not TV dinner. If you're that
worried about missing something, TiVo it.

2. No cell phones/texting.
Sorry kids. The next hour is dedicated to family. Everyone (including
parents) turn off your cell phones. And, no, putting them on vibrate
isn't an option.

3. Sit at the table. As opposed to the
couch, when at the table everyone is facing each other instead of
(let's be honest here) the TV. It makes the gathering about each other
instead of outside distractions.

4. Prepare healthy meals.
It's important that meals not just fill, but nourish your family. It's
not to say that having pizza for dinner is never a good thing, but it
should be the exception more than the rule. By providing healthy,
nutritious food you're showing your family you care about them enough
to put the effort into feeding them quality food. We grab enough junk
during the day in snacking and eating out that dinner can be, and in my
opinion, should be, healthy.

5. Work through the awkwardness.
I know this sounds a bit odd, but you might not be used to sitting
around as a family for extended periods of time without the TV on. At
first, that could mean conversations might seem forced and a little
awkward, especially if you have teenagers. Just be genuine and
persistent. As it becomes routine people will open up more. Keep at it
- it will get better.

6. Don't rush. Enjoy the meal. We
tend to get in the habit of scarfing down our food and moving on to the
next thing on our agenda. While that may be necessary if you're
squeezing in lunch at work, it shouldn't happen at home. Eating slower
has a number of benefits: you'll enjoy the food more, you'll generally
eat less and eating will change from a stressful event to a relaxing,
happy thing you can look forward to each day.

7. Stay put.
Just because you're plate's empty doesn't mean you're done with the
meal. My in-laws are particularly good at sitting at the table for a
while after everyone's done and just...hanging out. My father in-law
will ask someone to bring him some cookies and we'll sit around, pick
at the food that's left on the table and continue our conversation.
It's a wonderful, often hilarious experience.

8. Everyone help clean up.
Make sure everybody helps with dishes/cleanup. Not only does this
extend the time you're spending together as a family, but everyone
understands they have a responsibility to help with the meal, not just
the preparer of the food. Even little kids can wipe down the table
afterward with a wet cloth so they have a sense of ownership. Of
course, saying, "I've got it, you go sit down and relax" and giving
everyone else a night off is a welcome gesture too. Just make sure it's
not the same person always saying it. :)

Dinner has a lot of
potential as far as quality family time goes. These things have been
beneficial to me and my family in making the most of it.

Do you
have any other suggestions? What do you do to make dinner a special
time for your family? Please leave some ideas in the comments.

Modern life has us enmeshed in a web of unwanted and unnecessary commitments. Most of us spend the majority of our time doing things we don’t want to do.
We join committees because we think they’ll look good on our
resumes, go to birthday parties out of obligation, attend inane
meetings, stay in bad relationships out of fear, take on unwanted work
projects to gain favor with our bosses, stay in jobs we don’t
like instead of quitting.

Unwanted commitments seem to beget more unwanted commitments.
They’re like lies: they multiply fast. If you take on an
unwanted project to please your boss, then the next time a similar
project comes by she’ll throw it in your lap. If you
unhappily go to an acquaintances birthday party out of sense of
obligation, they’re likely to invite you over for dinner, or call
you more often. You get my drift.

What Does this Have to do with Productivity?

Well, it’s common knowledge that productivity naturally
emerges from passion: when we love what we’re doing, productivity
becomes irrelevant. The corollary is that being unproductive results from doing things you’d rather not do.

And while it’s a stretch to say that demand for productivity
material is driven purely by job dissatisfaction and passionless
living, I’m quite certain that the booming productivity industry
would be far less lucrative without an overworked, overwhelmed, and
continually stressed workforce. It’s not the fault of
productivity experts, they’re just responding to market demand
and they’ve done excellent jobs. It’s just that elaborate productivity systems have all too often become crutches for passionate living.
These systems are largely geared towards helping people do things
they’d rather not be doing. There are people living
passionately who still need productivity systems, but they’re the
exception rather than the rule.

The problem isn’t that people don’t have passions. Half of the bored-out-their-mind
workforce knows what they’d do if they weren’t so damn
busy, and the other half would find their calling if they only had
enough time to come up for air and breathe. The problem isn’t lack of passion, it’s lack of energy. It’s lack of time.
Perhaps a better time management system, or any number of hacks, would
help. But these things are often temporary fixes for an un-ideal
situation.

Passion and Productivity

Like many others, I’ve been quick to point out that the direct
route to productivity is being passionate about what you do. This observation, however, is largely an academic point
that doesn’t do much to help the problem. Very few people
hear that passion will make them productive and then-out of a
dedication to productivity-immediately proceed to follow their dreams
and become more productive. So, instead of talking about how
passion will make you more productive, I’d like to re-frame the
conversation by saying this . . .

Unwanted Tasks are the the #1 Cause of your Productivity Problems

If you only did things you wanted to do, you’d probably be the most productive person in the world.

Q: What’s the solution?
A: Stop doing things you don’t want to do.

Of course it’s not that simple, and
I’ll be spending the rest of this blog post trying to make sure
that this solution isn’t an oversimplification.

De-Simplification

OK, we all know that there are some things we have to do to
avoid imprisonment and being horrible human beings. We have to
pay taxes, we have to take care of our children (hopefully this is a
joy), etc. The problem is that most people are very bad at differentiating between these very real non-negotiables and fictional non-negotiables.

What I’m saying is that if you want ultimate productivity you
might want to think about aggressively removing everything you
don’t want to do from your life. Declutter your headspace.

Some Lists of Things you Don’t Have to Do

You simply don’t have to…

• Return all phone calls
  
• Respond to all email (I have 258 unread messages in my inbox right now)
  
• Stay on that committee you joined to pad your resume
  
• Take opportunities that “you’d be stupid to pass up”
  
• Stay in college
  
• Stay in grad school

It’s not necessary to…

• Hang out with friends you only kind-of sort-of like
  
• Stick with everything you start
  
• Live up to others’ expectations of you
  
• Have a respectable career, own a home, and be married by the time you’re 35, 45, or 55

In order to make time for renewal, you might have to…

• Not buy great/cool/expensive birthday and Christmas gifts for everyone
  
• Make your husband file his own papers
  
• Let those who have become unhealthily dependent upon you take responsibility for their own lives

In order to jump-start passionate living again you might have to…

• Stop being an (unnecessarily) “responsible” person
  
• Quit projects that are no longer relevant
  
• Be happy with a less than permanently clean home

In order to come alive, you might have to…

• Pursue an occupation that doesn’t put your insanely expensive degree to use
  
• Move back in with your parents
  
• Work a low-status, low-paying job in order to make time for your new endeavor
  
• Come to terms with your messy home
  
• Completely and utterly ignore your parent’s and friend’s expectations of you

If you really want to live passionately, you’ll need to
consider leaving nearly everything you’re not passionate
about. To live passionately you may have to quit your job, sell
your home, rent a small apartment, and live simply for a while.

To get off the treadmill you’ll have to realize that your high IQ does not obligate you to work 80-hour weeks in high-status professional career. Your high IQ also doesn’t obligate you to get a Ph.D., or to put on any other golden handcuffs.

In order to de-clutter all the crap in your life, you might have to
quit a lot of things. You might have to say no hundreds of
times. You might have to back out of several commitments.
And you’ll very definitely run an incredibly high risk of looking
like a flake, coming across as arrogant and ungrateful, and
disappointing people who love you. It’s an understatement
to say that . . .

All of This Takes Chutzpa, and is Scary as Hell

It’s scary as hell
not just because it requires hundreds of leaps of faith, but also
because people will aggressively resist your liberation. (For the
best illustrations I’ve seen on this topic, check out The Well).
People stuck on the treadmill of life have often invested a lot of time
and anxiety buying into all the “shoulds” of life.
Your liberation will threaten their mode of existence. Lots of
people have devoted themselves to following, and strictly enforcing,
societal rules, and your liberation will threaten the very foundation
of their false parallel universe. By breaking free,
dropping down the rabbit hole, taking the red pill, etc. you will
challenge numerous false assumptions, and you may sadly loose
friendships. I have. It sucks.

I want to emphasize that it’s not quitting things and being
flaky that will make you productive, it’s the aggressive
elimination of everything that doesn’t make you come alive.
You have to clear the weeds to make way for a garden of authentic living.

This is a lot of sacrifice for the sake of getting things done, and you may be thinking . . .

Why Do All This for Productivity?

The answer is that none of this should be done for
productivity’s sake. In the grand scheme of things,
productivity is mostly irrelevant. No one lying on their death
bed wishes they had implemented a better time management system, or
created a ticker file, or been more diligent about emptying their
inboxes each week. They may, however, wish that they’d quit
their 30-year-old dead-end job, spent more time with family or
children, and actually traveled the world or wrote that novel.

Quitting, “Flakiness,” and Escape: Not for Its Own Sake

All of this quitting and flakiness is certainly not for its own sake; it shouldn’t become a way of life or your primary mode of existence. Leaving,
quitting, backing out should not become a habit. Escape should
not become your primary means for solving difficult problems.
The elimination discussed in this article is for the sole purpose of
creating space to grow a beautiful life, and as you eliminate, be sure
to replace all your “shoulds” with joyful work and
authentic endeavors.

For tens of thousands of years, human beings didn’t have
clocks. They lived, amazingly, by the sun and the moon and seasons and
the needs and rhythms of their bodies.

The clock is a very very recent invention, and even more recent is
our modern society’s slavish adherence to the dictatorship of the
clock.

Only very recently have we been forced to work from 8 to 5, and to
go to school and follow a very rigid class schedule. Only very recently
have we become obsessed with tracking and making use of every minute,
so that we have things to do when we’re waiting for other things
to happen.

Only recently did we begin to lose our humanity, begin to lose the
art of conversation and the art of listening to our bodies, begin to
lose sight of what’s really important and begin to become robots.

I’m as guilty as anyone else, but as I simply my life I begin
to question the culture that surrounds me and wonder why it is that I
feel so pressured to do things so quickly, by a timeline or schedule
set by others, to be so productive when what I really want is to be
happy.

Have you ever felt that way? I know I’m not alone.

I have a solution, and it’s not original I’m sure but it
surely isn’t as common as it should be: break free from the
clock. Get in touch with the rhythms of life, of your body and of
nature. Be more relaxed and reject the notion that time rules us.

The Benefits of Being Free of Clockhood

Now, I’m not saying that we should throw our clocks and
watches away (though I don’t own a watch) … I’m not
saying we should all quit our jobs and go live in the woods. I know
that my reality is different from most people, as I’m my own boss
— but ask yourself, is it possible for you to be your own boss?
And if not, is it possible at least to find a job where you can set
your own schedule? For many people, it is possible. For others, you
won’t be able to live all the tenets of this manifesto, but you
can change smaller things, here and there.

Why should you change things? Because the clock is meaningless
— we follow it without really realizing why. We follow it because
we’ve been raised to believe we should, and because those who
control us (bosses, corporations, schools, etc.) set schedules we must
follow. The clock, then, is a means to control us — and that, in
my book, is as good a reason to break free from it as any.

Beyond issues of freedom, breaking free from the clock is healthier.
It’s healthier to follow your natural sleep rhythms, to eat when
you’re hungry rather than when it’s time to eat, to live a
more relaxed schedule rather than to be stressed out all the time
trying to meet deadlines and follow artificial schedules.

How to Break Free

It’s probably not advisable to try to change your life
drastically, if you are interested in breaking free of the
clock’s tyranny. Change things a little at a time. Below are a
few things I’ve been doing, or that I’m trying to do, that
you might consider. You don’t have to do all of them — pick
one and give it a try, and see if it is useful. The list, of course,
isn’t comprehensive, but I hope it helps you spark some ideas of
your own.

1. Don’t eat on the clock. Why do you think
   we’re taught to eat “three squares a day”? In human
   history, this is a very strange concept. People used to eat when they
   were hungry (or at least, when the food was available), not at
   predetermined times of the day. The answer, of course, is that it is a
   better structure for industrialized corporations — people, in the
   early days of working in factories, had to be broken from their natural
   eating patterns and only given one meal break a day. Too many eating
   breaks means lost profits! So we learned to eat before work, then once
   during work, then after work. Partly as a result of that, we’re
   ravenous during lunch and dinner times, and we overeat. And we eat
   unhealthy stuff because of our ravenous hunger, and we get fat.
   Instead, learn to listen to your body, and eat when you get a little
   hungry. Grazing is a good thing, actually. Eat healthy stuff if you
   can, and don’t eat beyond what it takes to satisfy your
   body’s hunger. Don’t eat if you’re not hungry just
   because it’s time to eat. Learn to trust your body’s hunger
   signals, and you’ll become much healthier.
2. Don’t work on the clock. We work on set
   schedules for the same reason — for corporations to maximize
   profits. But we don’t need to be controlled by corporations. If
   you have the chance to set your own schedule, learn to find the times
   when you have the most energy, and do your important work at these
   times. Learn to follow your passion, and do work that gets you excited,
   and you’ll do a better job. Many companies these days allow
   people to change their schedules and work from anywhere — these
   are the companies you want to work for (unless you can find a way to
   work for yourself). These are the companies of the future, that
   recognize that people aren’t robots and need to be able to work
   whenever they want, as long as they get the work done.
3. Do fewer things. This is a maxim of Zen Habits, of
   course — do the important stuff, not just busywork. Do less, but
   focus on the high-impact stuff. I’m repeating it here because
   it’s an important cornerstone of the clockless method: if you do
   fewer things, you can do them at a more relaxed pace, instead of
   rushing to try to do everything within a set schedule. This rule
   applies not only to your work life, but to your life in general —
   do fewer errands, chores, civic activities, etc. in order to have a
   more relaxed schedule.
4. A more relaxed schedule. Once you’ve learned
   to do fewer things, and to work when your energy is high, you can learn
   to structure your day at a more relaxed pace. Leave lots of space
   between appointments so that you have transition time to get ready, to
   get to where you need to go, to finish up what you were doing, without
   having to rush. Or better yet, avoid making appointments. Know what you
   want to do today, but do them in any order you like and at whatever
   time works best for you.
5. Meditate and/or exercise. These two related
   activities allow you to get more in touch with yourself, you inner
   mind, and with the world around you. If you sit in an office all day,
   when will you get outside to breathe fresh air and see what the sky
   looks like? If you don’t stop doing the million things you do
   every day, when will you be able to close your eyes and listen to what
   is happening within you? While you don’t need to meditate or
   exercise every day, I highly recommend it.
6. Take naps. Naps have been given a bad name (though
   they seem to be making a comeback), mostly because people who take naps
   are seen as lazy. Yet in many countries outside the United States,
   people take regular naps in the afternoons (think siestas) and in my
   opinion, this is a more enlightened way of living. Since working from
   home, I have discovered the power of the nap, and have come to look
   forward to it almost as much as I look forward to exercise. When you
   find yourself getting tired in the middle of the day, listen to your
   body and sleep.
7. Learn to listen to your intuition. We have become
   out of touch with our intuitions. Now, I’m not a new-agey hippy
   type (not that there’s anything wrong with that), but I do
   believe that listening to our bodies and our non-rational minds has a
   lot of value. It is healthier and saner. However, it’s not easy
   to learn — it takes time, and it takes listening. Try it today,
   and see if you can stop resisting your intuition and live more in tune
   with yourself.
8. Take time to talk and connect. How many times have
   you run into a friend or family member, said a quick hello, and then
   moved on because you were in a hurry? When did we lose touch with our
   fellow human beings? I believe that this is a key to our
   dehumanization, to our becoming robots: we no longer connect with other
   people as much as we used to do. We’ve lost the skills necessary
   to have an enjoyable, relaxed conversation. We’ve lost the
   institutions that encourage discussion and debate and thinking and
   participation. Instead, we watch TV and stare at the computer and sit
   in our cubicles and our one-person cars and rarely if ever make human
   contact. This separation disempowers us (if that’s even a word,
   but it should be), and makes us powerless and inhuman. Instead, next
   time you see someone you know (or even if you don’t know them),
   stop, breathe, smile, relax, talk, listen.
9. Spend time on the important things. Another maxim
   of Zen Habits, of course: learn to step back and think about
   what’s important in your life. Learn to spend time doing these
   things instead of the things that have naturally come to fill your
   life. Forget about schedules and clocks and instead focus on
   what’s important. You’ll be glad you did.