Young man sitting on a bench near a lake.
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Finding time to “fart around” can feel impossible when we’re busy. But the secret to transforming your career may be finding more time to fart around.
It has been a busy fall so far. I’m teaching a class, so I lost my dedicated “research semester”. I was at the American Public Health Association Annual Meeting last week (which I would highly recommend if you haven’t gone – it was so fun), which meant prepping for the presentation and, of course, traveling to San Antonio for the meeting. We also just started building a house, which means copious amounts of paperwork and a second full-time job answering questions and making sure I am not the thing holding up the process.
1. Busy, busy, busy
Being busy isn’t new. However, over the last couple of years, as I have refined my list of responsibilities and become more discerning about what I say “yes” to, I’ve been fortunate to see more white space in my calendar. You know, time where there isn’t something specifically waiting for my attention. Just time to decide what I would like to do and then doing it.
As is usual when I get busy, I hadn’t noticed the creeping sense of overwhelm resting on my chest. It wasn’t until last Friday, as I was catching up on things that had been back-burnered for speaking prep, that I felt a rush of relief seeing my calendar open up so much this week.
2. Time for “farting around”
So, it was especially fortuitous that this month’s edition of the newsletter “This is going nowhere”, written by one of my fav online influencers and founder of Growth Inc., Colleen Bordeaux, was about the need to “fart around”.
If you didn’t have at least one parent hyper-focused on raising “useful” children, you might not know the phrase. In my experience, it was never used positively. The admonition was always to “STOP farting around” whenever any of my siblings or I dawdled.
This is part of why Bordeaux’s reframing in the newsletter was so impactful. She wrote that she's been very busy growing her business, which has really taken off, and chasing her sweet baby around. But that has meant much less time to fart around.
Farting around gave her the idea for “This is Going Nowhere,” a hard-copy newsletter mailed directly to your door each month, whose logistics have become a full-time job on their own. Farting around gave her the idea to write and publish her first book, to take a sabbatical, which was not the norm for someone with her previous role, and finally step away from her very successful management consulting job, bet on herself, and start her own business.
Farting around (coupled with hard work, determination, and trust in herself) got her where she is today. Farting around has also helped me discover articles, books, and podcasts that have given me some of my best research ideas and helped me hone my lateral-thinking muscles (something no community-based researcher can manage without). It’s also time that has kept me sane and prevented me from burning out and hating my job. So, here’s to farting around!!
3. Getting your own farting around time this week!
Getting some farting around time on your calendar takes some effort, but I promise it isn’t too much. So here are some ideas you can start with this week:
1. Block non-negotiable time on your calendar to do your own work. This doesn’t mean reviewing a student’s paper or replying to emails. Read that fun article that’s been open in a browser tab for the last three months.
2. Decline 1 meeting invite this week. Choose a meeting you aren’t running or contributing to heavily and just don’t go. We all have meetings on our calendars that don’t need us, so this week, just don’t go.
3. Set a timer for 5 minutes and do nothing. That’s right: do ABSO – FREAKING – LOOTLY NOTHING. Is your skin crawling at the thought of that? Good. Do it anyway. You can’t get good at farting around if you are constantly worried about being productive. You need to get comfortable doing less.
What Do You Think?
Which of these steps can you commit to this week?
I’ve been busy blocking my time this week, so I can’t get pulled into meetings 😊.
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