How to be Unproductive :P

Last Sunday, that is, 28^th Oct I spent, in the opinion of most of the people perhaps the most “unproductive” day of my life. I got up really late and after hogging on sandwiches and paranthas I went on to watch TV for like an hour or so. In middle of Two and Half Men, I realized that Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows was left unfinished and I switched from TV to the movie. Watching the movie the lunch time approached and I was summoned by my mother for lunch, the movie got over and I again packed my stomach. I generally tend to take a nap after lunch, but this time around I decided to rather read on Google Reader! So I read in some news, blogs and comics for like an hour and then another realization came, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was also pending. I had seen the movie for like 10 minutes and that will be like just the introduction. So I started over again and the movie was great. I went into trance thinking about the vastness of the universe and what not. Then I went on to watch the Indian Grand Prix on the TV and was reading Murphy’s Laws side by side. I engaged myself late evening and night surfing for the novel series of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and watching more TV while devouring the cake that was brought to celebrate Dad’s birthday a day back and slept early.

So this was the summary of what I did on Sunday. As mentioned before, most people will term it as “unproductive”. But then, how do you define “Productiveness”? In my honest opinion it is not possible to define something as productive or otherwise. The reason being we don’t know what lies in the future and if the things we are doing and terming as unproductive are really so. Who knows I am asked what was Michael Schumacher’s race position in the Indian Grand Prix in one interview I am to appear, or what book are am I reading or if I have read or seen The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, what is my take on incredible detective skills of Mr. Holmes.

Point is I have seen people terming days which they spend doing legitimate tasks like writing programs or experimenting as “unproductive” when they do not arrive at the expected results. This shouldn’t be the case, because at least you learn one way that the program or the experiment will not work. This is about doing real work and not sitting idle and watching television series or reading for pleasure. But it applies to even them. For instance some people happen to sleep for a long time during the weekends or holidays and then spend the remainder of the day cursing themselves for getting up late, instead of just understanding that their body required rest and it is good it got some. Watching your favorite television series can be helpful in releasing stress and anxiety of your daily life. I read somewhere that active or inactive the brain is always operating in the same capacity, it is just that when we are active and consciously carryout activities some parts of our brain are active while others are not and when inactive the parts earlier dormant start up while others fall inactive helping us to release stress and increasing our shelf lives so to say.

So nothing that we do is actually “unproductive” in the long run because subconsciously we gather a lot, it may be true that these activities may be termed so when you are focusing on short term results but in long term nothing can be really said. The next time you feel to just “lounge” around for a day, do not hesitate to do so.

There is a small Conditions Apply here though, you shouldn’t keep procrastinating what you are supposed to do by doing things that you aren’t getting any real benefit from. Apart from that everything is cool

Cheers! and Relax!

Images courtesy : WhiteboardUnicorns, TopGreetings and Officeo2consulting