07/15/2025
I have a bit of advice for you: Be lazy. Okay, don’t be too lazy, but learn the value of downtime.
Summer is the perfect season to practice it. Get outside. Sit on the porch with a cold drink. Enjoy a quiet swing in a hammock. Wander the local park. Feel the breeze on your face and remember that rest is not a luxury—it’s a necessity.
In an article written for a New York Times blog, essayist and cartoonist Tim Kreider provided some honest self-disclosure: “I am not busy. I am the laziest ambitious person I know.” (Newport, Deep Work, 142)
What led Kreider to this confession was his frenetic work pace, which became unsustainable. He wrote, “I’ve insidiously started, because of professional obligations, to become busy... every morning my inbox was full of emails asking me to do things I did not want to do or presenting me with problems that I now had to solve.”
He found himself checking emails after hours and browsing work-related websites. Instead of boosting his productivity, his manic schedule was draining him.
His solution? He rediscovered the value of downtime. As he put it, “Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets . . . it is, paradoxically, necessary to getting any work done.”
Can I get an “Amen”?
Science and experience both tell us we need to schedule unscheduled time into our days. We need downtime to better manage time. According to Cal Newport in his excellent book, Deep Work, “This strategy argues that you should follow Kreider’s lead by injecting regular and substantial freedom from professional concerns into your day, providing you with the idleness paradoxically required to get (deep) work done.” (ibid., 143)
Maybe this summer, that means being more strategic with your fifteen-minute break each morning. Rather than skipping it—or letting it vanish into idle chatter—step outside. Soak in the sunshine. Breathe deeply. Pray. Take a short walk and let your mind rest.
It may sound counterintuitive, but sometimes the best way to solve a problem is to ignore it for a while. Not forever—but long enough for your mind to breathe. A walk. A chapter from the Bible or a classic book. I’ve often found that it’s in those moments of not thinking about a problem that a solution gently appears.
And if you feel you need permission to value downtime, look no further than the words of Jesus:
“Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while.” (Mark 6:31)
A little challenge: Step outside today. Find a patch of shade, a quiet bench, or your favorite porch chair. Breathe deeply. Let yourself be unproductive for a few minutes—and see what happens.
