It’s the day and age of hustle culture. We talk about working hard and staying committed to work so much that taking time off for yourself or your family is often looked down upon. Being available on vacations is rewarded with quicker promotions and higher bonuses. Leaving the office even at 8.00 p.m. (yes, that late) is considered a half-day. Saying no to being overworked is seen as a sign of laziness. Not carrying your laptop along on your vacation is applauded. What will we know and appreciate about the art of doing nothing?
With smartphones making it possible to do practically all kinds of work anywhere you go, we’ve forgotten what it’s like to live in the moment and enjoy life’s little pleasures. Can you ignore the Outlook notification when you’re sitting at a restaurant for dinner? Or are you thinking about how many likes your dinner post is going to get when you upload it on Instagram? It’s just so hard to switch off!
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Understanding Dolce Far Niente
On the other hand, the Italians live by ‘Dolce far niente’, which literally translates into ‘the pleasantness of doing nothing’. While we can’t even sit in the loo without our phones, the Italians have a word for ‘doing nothing’ – not having an agenda, taking a break to appreciate the small things in life like smelling the roses, relishing the food you’re eating, taking a nap and living in the present moment without feeling an iota of guilt.
The concept is engrained and taught by families to their kids from pretty early on in their culture to train them to become adults to can consciously cut off to refresh and rejuvenate between work.
The happiest people in the world do nothing
When Gianni Pes and Michel Poulain studied the blue zone Sardinia in Italy, they chalked out some pretty interesting characteristics. One of them was ‘living a relaxed work-life’, ‘taking time out for the things that truly mattered’, and ‘being present in the moment’. Later on, when Dan Buettner studied some other blue zones around the world, he noticed similar characteristics.
In these areas, people didn’t take pride in working late in the office at the expense of one’s health. Rather, they took pride in being able to take the evenings off to come home and spend time with their families, doing the things they enjoyed doing like reading a book, watching a movie, playing games with their friends and family, and cooking and eating fresh food.
This isn’t just the reading from the internet. I confirmed this with someone I know who works in Italy. She’s also a lawyer but unlike us, she was encouraged to not rush into work early and not applauded for working late. Instead, she got to go home and have a big freshly made lunch and come back to work after an afternoon siesta. Can you believe it? She was encouraged to go home and sleep for a while before coming back to work! I can barely wrap my head around this.
It turns out, it’s not just the Italians, the Dutch also have a word for it. It’s called ‘Nikeson’. Mind you, the Dutch have consistently claimed the position of being the happiest people in the world. Wonder what makes them such happy people?
Olga Mecking, who was born in Poland and grew up in Germany lived in the Netherlands for 14 years. According to her, the reason for the true happiness of the Dutch is Nikeson. Their lives are less about their work and more about them and their communities.
The reality check
A couple of years ago, I joined one of the big law firms right out of college. I was super excited to be there, after all, it was my dream job. The reason why I worked my ass off in college. It was 4.30 p.m. on a Monday in the office when the boss called all the juniors in a conference room.
Well, the boss seemed to be in a pretty decent mood after the closing of a big transaction when he came to the office in the morning. So the eight of us sitting around one of those long conference room tables were pretty hopeful about the motivating pep talk we were going to be getting that day. And ‘pep talk’ it was!
He started by narrating all the stories about how committed he has been to his work and all about what got him where he is today – marking up documents and conference calls all through the night and vacations with friends and family. He worked when he was out with his wife for a date night, he worked when he was on a vacation in Maldives while his wife and kids toured the place. He worked on his HONEYMOON! What would he know about Dolce Far Niente? How would he ever embrace the art of doing nothing and sitting still?
Let me just step in here and tell you all that no, he isn’t a doctor or a nurse or in any profession where he is saving lives, taking care of the poor or the displaced or feeding people food. He is a lawyer and no, not the kind that has anything to do with saving people’s homes, or standing up for the rights of the underprivileged. I’m not underplaying some peoples’ dire situations that leave them no option but to work like they do to feed mouths and be the breadwinners. But he wasn’t in that situation at all!
You know what the weird part is, he was so proud of it. He was truly trying to set an example for all of us. This was one hell of a pep talk. What a reality check about what the next 20 years of our lives were going to look like if we wanted to make it to where he had reached!
The ‘pep talk’ from the boss instantly resulted in five out of the eight people unconsciously planning an exit with our too busy to do anything else in life flashing right in front of us. We spent back-to-back nights at the office. Would you believe that we had a sleeping room at the office because of how often this happened? Doing nothing was a foreign concept! (pun intended)
When was I going to go on my vacation? When was I to read the book that I had been planning to read? When was I going to read the news? When was I going to do nothing when the people around me flaunted exhaustion?!
Unsurprisingly, people around me looked constantly tired, suffered from backaches and headaches, ordered all their food that was eaten at random times of the day and night, and had no sleep routines. Even if you’re not working, when was the last time you went to the loo without your phone? When was the last time that you got so immersed in living in the moment that you forgot to check your notifications?
How can Dolce Far Niente help you?
Remembering who you are and why you’re here
The journalist Gebke Verhoeven writes “We cram our free time so that we don’t have a minute left to just do nothing. Is that bad? Yes, that’s bad. You don’t give your brain space and time to process information and feel what you need. In short, you lose yourself a bit. High time to elevate idleness to art.”
We’re so constantly focused on working and filling up our time that we lose track of everything that is happening around us. We don’t have to the time do something as basic as feeding ourselves clean and healthy food or planning a date night without having the sword of work on our heads. We lose track of what’s happening around us, where our friends and families are and what can we even do about it when we can barely keep track of our own lives.
We’re so lost and addicted to the life of occupying all of our time with work or meaningless scrolling that we have forgotten what it is like to be in a space that lets us process everything around us and do what we like to do. So much so, that it becomes almost comfortable to be in a mental space where we’re too tired to deal with everything around and check where in life we really are and consciously steer the course of our lives in the way that we want to live it.
I’m talking about the small things in life like making your favourite meal, going to a bookstore, going shopping with a friend, planning a movie night with your partner and thinking about all the things that make life worth living!
Improved emotional regulation
It doesn’t matter whether you’re consciously or unconsciously avoiding your environment by constantly doing something or the other. The result is that your brain doesn’t get the time that it needs to process any experiences or emotions because you’re constantly pushing them back for something else.
Giving your system the time that it needs to register everything around you allows you to understand and respond to your environment more effectively. Studies have shown that the longer the sleep, the better the positive emotions and ability to deal with emotional reasoning and behavioural response. Better quality of work and home life.
Productivity and work
Imagine if you were to eat constantly without a break for two days straight. What would happen to your digestive system? How do you think your body is going to react? Yes, Sherlock – it’s going to go all up in arms and if you conveniently ignore those alarms, it will start giving you shocks in the form of illnesses and diseases.
It’s the same with your brain. Research conducted by E&Y shows that the employees’ performance improved by 8% per 10 hours of vacation they took from work. ‘Doing nothing’ actually adds to the productivity. If you overburden it, it’s going to give up. But if you were to allow it to process the information and stimulus that it picks up from around, it will reward you by allowing you to get more done in less time, allowing you to be more creative and make fewer mistakes at home and work.
Evidence from blue zones: Happy and long lives worth living
All the evidence from the blue zones just like Italy where people around the world are happiest and live the longest and most fulfilling lives shows that they’re not spending all their time working or on Instagram while avoiding sleep and life around them. They live their lives by prioritising themselves more than anything else. They take the time to do small things like gardening, reading, playing games, and taking afternoon naps.
And you should be doing the same. Start small, switch off the internet for 15 minutes. Then increase gradually to two hours and then to four.
I get it, it doesn’t come so naturally to all of us. And that’s fine. I also overstretch myself more than I’d like. It takes effort to remind myself to slow down – even on a weekend. I swear it helps to clear the mind and come back to work and all the things I want to get done with a refreshed mind. So let’s all learn to take conscious steps to plan how to use our time rather than letting it happen to us.
Practical tips for inculcating Dolce Far Niente in your daily lives
Learn to take breaks and schedule mandatory downtimes
Often, in the flow of work, we forget to give our brains a break even though there are tons of techniques showing us how breaks can improve the quality of our work product. So schedule your breaks and set alarms if you need to do that.
Find joy in small things
The idea is to find joy in small things. Money and things are important of course, but it’ll never be enough if that is what you will need to be happy. There will always be a new iPhone in the market or a new brand that you would want to try. That’s how the rich make their money – through consumerism. If you’re in the right headspace and with the right people around, you’ll have fun even in the shittiest of the places. So focus on finding that headspace and those people!
Instead of focusing on how many times you almost lost your shit, think about how many times you smiled today.
Live in the present moment
Yeah, well, the past happened and it may have been super shitty but there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. No matter how hard you try, it’s always going to stay the same. So accept that you can’t change the past and that you always can’t control the circumstances. The thing about negative emotions and feelings is that you only harm yourself. The world will and continues to go on – whether you’re happy, sad, angry, or jealous.
No matter what the circumstances and the external scenario, you can be happy (as cliched as it sounds) only if internally you decide to make the most of what you have! Get your life in order and start living today.
Don’t sit in shit
I get it, we can’t change all the circumstances that we’d maybe like to. But some of them we definitely can. If you’re around toxic people, distance yourself from them. If you’re stuck in a horrible workspace, update your CV and apply elsewhere. If you’re not happy with the food, learn how to cook better. Make it happen because you CAN and because it won’t get better on its own no matter how hard you try.
Make time for your people
Some people have been there for you in your most desperate times and this is your cue to make time for those people. If, for some reason, you’re not able to get in touch with them, be there for others who you’d like to be there for in their desperate times to form meaningful connections. These things don’t happen on their own especially as we grow older and get busy with our lives. Make a conscious effort to reach out to the people you care about and who care about you.
When you read this post today, skip that work thing and take a nap! Do it when you wake up. I promise the world won’t end when you wake up! Once you wake up and realise that the world is just as you left it, make it a ritual! Do it every week. No, do it every day! And don’t forget to tell me about it later. 🙂
Live a better life and don’t wait for it to just pass you by.
