“You can’t just sit there…”

The office was a great show. There were a lot of good life lessons to take away from it and often they hit true comedy gold. It’s a show I wish I could re-watch with a blank slate. I could use a good laugh these days.

However, one of the life lessons I’ve been thinking about is when Jim becomes the boss and Michael takes the sales job to get the big incentive pay. Michael hasn’t done the sales tasks in a long time and he’s a bit out of the game. It’s obvious that he’s sitting there fidgeting and distracting others.

Then, when he obviously is not working, Jim calls him on the phone and utters this fantastic line, “You can’t just sit there, man. You gotta do something.” It was delivered perfectly.

Idleness is commonly thought of in such a way. Instagram is plastered with messages of doing simple things to improve your life. There’s a war out there and the Instagram intelligentsia are om the front lines.

Actually, the battle against idleness goes all the way back to ancient times. It was considered one of the seven deadly sins in catholic thought and many secular or other religious writers railed against it. Yes, we should be wary of our idleness… the but will come later, though.

For me, the worst kind of idleness has been when I could be stealing time from doing something else. The decision to not multi-task or to allow myself to be distracted by reels or news articles when I could be focusing on language learning, my degree, my job or even this blog has a high opportunity cost. When I walk, I can I listen to language tapes. I can do the same when I’m at the gym or I can listen to my coursework.

Doing these kinds of things save me my free time. It’s so important to me that I get the most out of my time. This is one of my most important maxims these days.

However, planning to do nothing… now that has it’s place, too.

To be honest, I started and stopped writing this article so I’m just going to publish it as is here. I’m battling perfectionism on multiple fronts and moving forward is often key. So, semi-unfinished it is. Candidness is a virtue, too, I guess.