The gift of productive daydreaming

Many years ago, when I was young and my father was still alive, I found him sitting quietly on the patio bench in the front yard.

Beside him lie an iced tea and a book on Austrian history on an iron end table. He put them aside to look up at the summer sky.

He is very calm, his face calm and expressionless.

“So what are you doing?” I said I was walking to join him.

“Productive daydreaming,” he said.

“I thought all the history of the Habsburg Monarchy numbed you,” I joked, failing to elicit a response.

“And what the heck is productive daydreaming? Sounds like an excuse to be lazy,” I said with a smile. I had fun poking the lion, knowing I was no match for his brilliant intellect. But Baba kept his skyward gaze as if hypnotized by unseen angels.

We sat there for a few moments, and then she broke her heavenly gaze and leaned in a little toward me and said, “Sometimes, Johnny, you don’t have to do anything to get things done.”

“I tried a few times last semester at school, but it didn’t help my grades,” I said with a smile.

“Beer statues are not the stuff of productive daydreams,” he replied in his steady baritone.

Yes, I shouldn’t have poked the lion.

Peace, wonder and wonder

Most people come to Las Vegas to gamble and show, not wild, bighorn sheep.

Sin City is a grown-up playground that offers an escape from the lights, attractions, casinos and sometimes dull rhythms of work life. Food, shows and excitement help burnout people avoid work and responsibilities.

But do they return to work refreshed, recharged and more productive?

Just thirty minutes outside the Vegas Strip, Hemenway Park has sloping lawns and beautiful views of Lake Mead in the background. But the park’s best attraction is the wild bighorn sheep that regularly come from the surrounding hills to graze on the park’s lawns and pose for pictures.

My wife, who has always known about magical places, introduced me to Hemenway Park and its bighorn sheep. He knew I was too fixated on my creative work and needed to reclaim my soul.

After we walked past the parking lot and playgrounds, BBQs, covered pavilions and basketball courts, we saw a large herd of bighorn sheep emerge from the hillside and make their way onto the green lawn.

They are majestic and peaceful creatures, and I frantically fumbled with my rangefinder camera to capture the experience.

Travel and photography blog “try to have some fun” Park and shared the following information about bighorn sheep:

‘It’s the only place I know of in the lower 48 where a person can go and get up close to that animal and just observe,’ said Doug Nielsen, conservation education supervisor for the Nevada Department of Wildlife. Those same animals in the park, if you tried to approach them in the wild, it wouldn’t happen.’ He also said at the Hemenway Park dedication ceremony that bighorn sheep are one of Nevada’s crown jewels. They are actually the state animal of Nevada. The Parks and Recreation Department has found that sheep have value in maintaining manicured grass, helps keep it fertilized, and people really enjoy watching them. They hope people will understand sheep better and understand the importance of wildlife as a whole.

Shortly after I started photographing the sheep, tourists came out of the parking lot and joined me. Some women started photographing the sheep from a safe distance.

A group of men join the women and start taking selfies with sheep grazing behind them.

And then we all put down our cameras and cellphones, as if some divine whispering in our ears, “Stop trying to record the moment, learn how to live in the moment.”

There was a light breeze, the sun was shining and the sheep had a kind of hypnotic effect on us. I sat on the grass with the others, and we became a silent little community moved by the fresh air and nature.

I think what we felt was a bit of peace, awe and wonder.

My wife had been to this park before and knew about the sheep and the charm of the place. He found a park bench to rest on and took it all in.

Finally, I snapped out of my nature-induced, mystical stupor and returned to my wife. He looked as serene as my father, all those years ago, daydreaming on his patio bench.

And perhaps for the first time, I finally understood what it meant for my father to have productive daydreams.

Soul-sapping rush culture

Georgetown University computer science professor and best-selling author Cal Newport has a new book coming out, titled “Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Achievement Without Burnout.”

His website offers the following book introductions:

Our current definition of ‘productivity’ is broken. This forces us to treat busyness as a proxy for useful effort, leading to impossibly long task lists and endless meetings. We’re overwhelmed by what we have to do and on the brink of burnout, left to decide between giving in to a soul-sapping rush culture or rejecting ambition altogether. But are these really our only choices?

Newport’s book is timely. There has been an increasing amount the story Lately it’s about social media and YouTube influencers who are giving up They’re tired and burned out from endless content creation. And there are plenty of other professions who are equally tired of chasing more customers, sales, etc.

Before pre-ordering the book, I read some free sample pages, including Newport’s description of slow productivity:

A philosophy for organizing knowledge work efforts in a sustainable and meaningful manner based on the following three principles:

1. Do less stuff

2. Work at normal speed

3. Obsession over quality

Newport’s slow productivity philosophy “…rejects busyness, seeing overload as an obstacle to producing important results, not as a badge of pride. It also believes that professional endeavors should unfold at a more varied and human pace, with periods of hard work balanced by periods of relaxation, and that should not focus on impressive activities.”

In an age where we are all increasingly immersed in a culture of digital immersion, distraction, rush and fatigue, perhaps we should reevaluate how we spend our time.

A term Cal Newport shares in his new book is “lazy intentionality.” Sounds a lot like “productive daydreaming”.

My father knew that productive daydreaming frees your mind, a kind of liminal space between chaos and paradise, away from work life and frenetic living. Its restorative powers often lead to epiphanies, creative breakthroughs, and better focus.

Make more time for the park bench

What do you think?

Are you ready for more productive daydreaming? Willing to be more lazy? If so, here are my suggestions.

Make more time for the park bench.

There is a cement bench along the walkway above my house.

I often sit on the bench during my daily dog ​​walk. I close my eyes, channel my father’s wisdom, and practice productive daydreaming.

how are you

Find a park bench. Get out into nature. Dig your hands into the garden soil. Swing in a hammock. Fly a kite. Walking the dog. Look up at the sky and try a little productive daydreaming. A bit of lazy intentionality.

Do these things and they will restore your spirit, improve your productivity, and expose you to moments of peace, wonder, and wonder.

This is the gift of productive daydreaming.

before going

John Patrick Weiss writes stories and essays about life, often illustrated through his black and white photography. visit JohnPatrickWeiss.com.

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This post was Previously published on Medium.com.