I implore you to do something useless

I implore you to do something useless

As you are contemplating your next side hustle, sifting through unfinished projects like a bird preening its nest or scribbling vague success plans on the back of napkins, I implore you to do something useless.

Knowledge and creativity… at work

I am, in my workaday job, what is termed an “Information worker”, which is to say that my labor consists largely of learning, knowing, applying information. It’s a form of labor that’s highly privileged in our society, but it is labor nonetheless.

And when I close work for the day and carve out some time for my creative projects, I stops being the information worker and become what’s commonly termed a “creative.”

The creatives are a special branch of the information worker tree. It comprises those tasks where what is learned, known, and applied can’t be codified as information. Businesses engage creatives when they recognize that the end product needs a dash of that indefinable “special sauce” that can’t be codified in an action plan or spreadsheet bus is, nevertheless necessary.

But make no mistake. These classifications of thoughtful and creative effort are society’s classifications. They belong to the world of work. They products they produce and the people who produce them are always something that can be reduced down to utility. The creative worker is paid so much for their hours of effort. The document they produce has a certain purpose that fits into a grander plan, which has an ultimate revenue impact and a return-on-investment.

All very well.

And when we are not off the clock, we can easily fall into the same trap of measuring all our creative efforts in terms of how useful they are to us and our final goals. Will this image make a good tweet? What will I share with my patrons this month? When can I put this book into the marketplace.

And we experience a great temptation to discard those parts of our creative process that don’t provide these benefits. We become our own brutal return-on-investment calculation.

image: gapingvoid.com

Society’s measures of labor adhere strictly to the quantifiable: what does the work cost; how long does it take; what is the product’s value; and how will it impact future work. That work is the work we typically get paid for, and it can be satisfying in its own right, but it does not fill the wellspring from which our creativity springs.

Aristotle (a workhorse himself) was the first to suggest that we do not live for work, we work so that we may live.

As I finish the final final final edits of the upcoming Isotope sourcebook, Down on Farm, I am looking around to see what creative project I will move to the top of my pile. I’m very tempted to make that choice on the basis of “work.” What unfinished project needs work? What can I sell? What do I think people want to see from me?

These are important questions all, but they pay only into society’s view of what I do as a form of labor. I’m thinking it’s time to make a work decision, but really I need to get back to life and so something that will nourish me so I can create again.

The decision about what to do next with your creativity is closely related to the question “what is art about?” If art is only about pulling in some income so you can buy more time to do more art and pull in more income, it’s not so different from the intellectual of physical labor of the job. But if not that, then what?

Creativity requires a mélange of experiences that cannot be quantifiable. They include but are not limited to: quiet contemplation, boredom, inspiration, taste, style, genre, motif, and dozens of others. These experiences do not come on-demand. They require a specific state of being that can only be acquired away from the measured and regimented processes that society loves too much.

Josef Pieper, in his book “Leisure the basis of culture” calls this state of being leisure.

“Leisure, it must be clearly understood, is a mental and spiritual attitude—it is not simply the result of external factors, it is not the inevitable result of spare time, a holiday, a week-end, or a vacation. It is, in the first place, an attitude of mind, a condition of the soul, and as such utterly contrary to the ideal of ‘worker’.”

And so, I implore you, take some time before your next project to do just whatever you are inspired to do. Or do nothing at all. Whatever you do, make it useless.

Make a social post that’s just… social

Turn off your Internet for an hour

Write a fanfic

Doodle on a post-it note

Ignore digital engagement

Give away a cool piece of art to someone who deserves it for free

Cancel an appointment

Write an adventure for a game that nobody else cares about

Take a walk

Draw a tarot card