Author Celeste Headlee Wants You to Do Nothing
Find your next great read from Random HouseView as a Webpage\ This Women’s History Month, we want to celebrate women past, present, and future. We’ve got books for an important lady in your life (including yourself!) and an interview with Celeste Headlee that’s sure to empower and inspire you. CELEBRATING FEMALE CHEFS
We publish some pretty amazing chefs, bloggers, and home cooks, and this spring we’ve got a ton of new books by these extraordinary women to add to your list!
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Staying informed is a big part of staying healthy. These books discuss hormones, stress, burnout, and more—and can be useful tools in keeping you feeling your best!
LEARN MORE Q&A WITH CELESTE HEADLEE In Do Nothing, Celeste, an award-winning journalist, illuminates a new path ahead, seeking to institute a global shift in our thinking so we can stop sabotaging our well-being, put work aside, and start living instead of doing.
When did you first realize you needed to Do Nothing?
The aha! moment for me happened while I was lying in bed, sick with bronchitis for the second time in a matter of months. For most of my life, I’ve rarely been ill and yet I seemed to go from one sickness to another in 2015 and 2016. What’s more, I was more stressed and frantic than I’d been while earning much less money. I wondered what the heck was going on and decided to figure out what was causing those feelings of being overwhelmed and overloaded.
What personal significance does the subject have for you?
Not only did my slavish devotion to long hours and efficiency hurt me and my family and my friends, I found that most of my friends and family were also suffering from it! The obsession with productivity and hard work is everywhere and seemed as toxic and mad as Ahab’s pursuit of the white whale.
What do you hope readers will gain after reading this book?
I want to help other people break free of the productivity prison. I’d love to help them step off the treadmill that’s forcing them to run constantly without moving forward. The emphasis on long work hours is so ingrained at this point that it will require real cultural change to free ourselves. I hope this book starts a conversation that becomes a movement aimed at bringing some sanity back to our offices and homes.
What are the advantages of leisure time?
The advantages are better health, both physical and mental, along with better relationships, more creativity, less stress, better sleep, and a whole host of other possible improvements. Human beings function best when we alternate focused work with idle time. We pulse between productivity and downtime, so gritting your teeth and forcing yourself to keep working is literally counterproductive. You will accomplish more if you take a break.
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