December 21, 2024

Unmotivated and Idle

The title says it all. Yes, I have things to do, but all I want to do is sleep. I’m not sure why I’m so exhausted. I have to prep my spring courses, update my servers (this site, for instance, is four versions behind), and do anything productive. I don’t have the energy or motivation. Maybe I should listen to my body, but I don’t even want to run or walk. I know a bit of this is biological: we should naturally be slowing down over winter, but I feel so guilty for doing nothing. And now, in this quiet moment (as quiet as it can be during the holiday season why two young boys), I feel compelled to wrestle with the question: Why does doing nothing feel so wrong?

This guilt isn’t an accident—it’s the product of a system that equates our worth with our utility. Under capitalism, our value is measured in units of output, in how much we can produce and consume. To rest is to waste; to be idle is to be irresponsible. But is this belief justified? Or is it, as Bertrand Russell argued in his essay “In Praise of Idleness,” an insidious myth that keeps us enslaved to a system that benefits from our exhaustion?

Russell wrote that the glorification of relentless work is not a moral virtue but a social construct designed to serve economic interests. He observed that modern societies prioritize productivity over leisure, ignoring the fact that leisure is essential for the cultivation of creativity, intellect, and emotional well-being. “The morality of work,” Russell writes, “is the morality of slaves, and the modern world has no need of slavery.” His words feel revolutionary, even liberating, in a world where busyness is treated as a badge of honor.

The guilt I feel, then, is not mine alone—it’s been placed on me by a system that seeks to commodify every moment of my time. This system thrives on the narrative that idleness is inherently wasteful, erasing the possibility that rest might actually be productive in ways the market cannot measure. As Russell suggests, idleness is not an absence of activity but an opportunity to reflect, imagine, and connect with what makes life meaningful.

In another vein, David Graeber’s work on “bullshit jobs” offers further validation for my discomfort with productivity for productivity’s sake. Graeber argues that much of the labor we perform is performative, unnecessary, and designed more to justify hierarchies than to fulfill human needs. Why should I feel guilty for resisting the call to produce when so much of what we’re pressured to produce is, as Graeber puts it, “pointless drudgery”?

I find myself thinking, too, of Virginia Woolf’s reflections on the value of idleness in her essay “Street Haunting.” For Woolf, the act of wandering aimlessly through the streets of London is a deeply creative and restorative practice, one that allows her to reconnect with the world and her inner self. Woolf’s idleness isn’t passive; it’s fertile. In doing “nothing,” she opens herself to new perspectives and insights that would never emerge in the noise of relentless productivity.

So perhaps these lazy, holiday days are not a failure but a small act of reclamation. In stepping outside the treadmill of work, I allowed myself to be a person rather than a producer. This idleness was not empty; it was full of possibility. It gave me space to question the system that demands so much of me and to imagine a life that values rest, leisure, and reflection as much as work.

As I sit with my guilt, I remind myself that it’s not my guilt at all—it belongs to the system. Tomorrow (or the next day), I’ll have to return to my tasks, but today, I reclaimed a piece of myself. And perhaps that, too, is a kind of productivity that no ledger can measure.

Russell was right: we don’t need more relentless toil; we need more idleness. In this space of rest, we can dream of something better. And isn’t that the first step toward creating it?

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