Our team has a bi-weekly team meeting where we all get together, talk about numbers, team results and goals, major projects in progress, and we also have a quick section where one person on the team shares “reflections” on something of their choosing, which is usually personal. My manager asked me to do the reflections for today, so I decided… I’m going to tell everyone how American I am in my obsession with productivity, with always doing something, that I got so obsessed with “making the most” of the sheltering in place due to the pandemic, that I ended up giving myself cubital tunnel syndrome as a result of it. And so I had to learn to slow down and ease my obsession with always “doing something,” and also took up meditation to slow my mind down.

My colleague, who I am friendly with, sent me a book recommendation in light of my reflection — Jenny Odell’s “How to Do Nothing,” which would likely aid in my desire to slow down. Yes, reading is actually doing something, but I like the idea of the book: resisting the attention economy.