Wasting Time vs Being Productive

In a skype call with Louise Smith (London) a few days ago, she was looking ahead in her calendar and how much space was in it, and how she was planning to fill in the blanks. Having that much openness in her diary is a novel experience. Wherever there are slots of available time, she fills it. She's very productive and gets a lot accomplished. In fact, she had just taken a day off and was feeling ready to plug fully into more projects – as many projects as she could slot into her PDA.

When we looked at how she had gotten that energized, she realized that it had come from taking a day off. Her day off was preceded by co-training the More To Life Weekend, which is an intensive experience. Productive, fallow, productive, fallow. In exactly the same way that a wise farmer works his fields. When one field has produced fruitfully, it needs time to regenerate the nutrients necessary to be fertile again.

In my past (and still occasionally), I have considered time spent non-productively as a waste of my time, a waste of my life. Eventually my body would rebel and shut me down by getting sick. The sneaky part of me would be relieved. I could go fallow Without Guilt. BUT, as a proponent of good health, I couldn't in good conscience stay down very long. As soon as possible, I would get up and move on.

Mothers (and fathers, but mostly mothers) all over the world know this one. No matter how sick you are, the baby still needs to be fed … which just drags out the healing time.

Bottom line: the world runs on systolic/diastolic, ebb/flow, winter/summer, night/day. So do we – active/fallow (till we become fertile again).