By Valerie Ng (25S06N)
The second most common phrase I hear nowadays is “need to lock in” – the first being “I’m so cooked” (and I secretly – well, not anymore – hate it). For those of you who have been so extremely blissfully ignorant about this phrase (and in turn, the reasons to “lock in”), the relatively new slang phrase means to focus and fully commit oneself to something, most commonly used in the context of academics.
This brings me to the question: what on earth is the obsession with the concept of “locking in”? This was a rhetorical question; of course I know what all the fuss is about.
As I write this very sentence, it is 18 August 2024, and the Year 5s are [REDACTED] – I did not come here to exact suffering upon you – days away from our Promotional Exams (more affectionately termed “Promos”!). It comes as no wonder then, that every waking moment of our days have to be dedicated to productivity.
Wake up at 7, go for a run until 8, only allow yourself 15 minutes in the shower, study until 12; plan every single activity (or obligation) down to the minute. Don’t you dare waste a second – your future (and the responsibilities to which you chain yourself for this very reason) awaits.
And then, the moment you open Instagram during your 5-minute break after 25 minutes of being “locked in” (as permitted – no, recommended by the Pomodoro method), you see story after story of classmates’, schoolmates’, ex-schoolmates’, basically screenshots of the whole world’s YPT app and their 10-hour study times.
The panic starts to set in. Are you doing enough? These are the people who will overtake you eventually (why are you racing?). How will you ever succeed? You close the app, and forgo the Pomodoro method. A 5-minute break every hour will suffice.
The fact is, we have all fallen victim to toxic productivity at some point in our lives. How could we not? As Billy Joel once very rightly pointed out, “[we have] got so much to do, and so many hours in a day”, and don’t get me started on peer pressure – the expectation to conform to and outdo your peers – this demon follows like a shadow and we cling on back to it (it’s close to the only thing we know).
But maybe it doesn’t have to be this way. Maybe there is more to life than YPT and “locking in”. Just maybe. Allow me to use a story to propose to you, The Art of Doing Nothing.
The Art of Doing Nothing
As all supposed study sessions do, the afternoon of 15 July began with the absolute resolve to “lock in”. Well, maybe not the absolute resolve – we sat around doing Nothing for about half an hour, clinging onto the reason that “we just ended lessons, let’s just take a short break”.
As the minutes went by, and more friends of ours entered the classroom, the entropy of the system kept increasing, and the probability of the occurrence of us actually “locking in” only kept tending towards zero (we kept the faith that we would get there at some point).
Long story short, sightings of multiple Rubik’s cubes around the classroom, half a horror movie, a meaningful conversation, the solving of said Rubik’s cubes, and the final “Guys, I’m hungry, let’s go eat” later, we left the classroom having completed a collective average of a quarter-lecture per person in the 5 hours we were there.
Now, you see it as time-wasting, I see it as time-spending; and the Dutch are with me on this. Niksen – a lifestyle concept of purposefully doing Nothing – is a widely recognised practice among the people. Niksen has been proven to boast benefits such as decreased stress levels, burnout, and increased creative capacity. It is amazing, really, what the human mind can accomplish when not bound by the constraints of schedule and rigid routine.
Another instance of how doing Nothing can be a good thing: taking a quote directly from Neil Gaiman, “I would go down to my lovely little gazebo at the bottom of the garden, sit down, and I’m absolutely allowed not to do anything. I’m allowed to sit at my desk, I’m allowed to stare out at the world, I’m allowed to do anything I like, as long as it isn’t anything.”
Essentially, he gives himself permission to either write, or do nothing at all. After a while, the appeal of the notion to do Nothing becomes far less interesting than the idea of actually writing.
By removing all worldly processes (one might argue, in this case, distractions), he turns this decision – to do or not to do – into a binary one, and allows the choice to become obvious. And so he begins.
It is also important to note that he does not do Nothing with the purpose of getting himself to write, but instead, allowing himself the time to do Nothing with no promise, or indication, of a productive writing session following the Nothing.
What I’m trying to say is that sometimes, being aimless is good; and allowing ourselves to do Nothing can be a blessing under the guise of seemingly inferior YPT study times, as seen on various social media platforms. Not every waking moment of our lives has to be deliberately channelled into productivity.
Not Doing Nothing, but Doing Other Somethings
That being said, surely our lives can’t be just panel after panel of black and white, alternating between Nothing and our obligations (the more optimistic say responsibilities). The colour only comes in when you allow yourself to do Something that is not what is mandatory. For example, solving a Rubik’s cube, or watching half a horror movie, or having a meaningful conversation about how you would like to be treated when upset.
It’s these little moments of subtle defiance against the wretched notion of productivity that give our student lives – and I’m sure, beyond that too – just a little bit of colour. That’s all we need anyway.
It is immensely dangerous to think that our lives have to be dedicated to producing the maximum level of output – what are you, a profit-maximising firm? But even then, the internal diseconomies of scale will soon kick in – dangerous in that it could kill you (well, spiritually, at least).
After all, the man who allows himself to be confined by the rules that his fears exact upon him, is the man who dies a thousand deaths.
It is only when we liberate ourselves from this long, needless line of rules that exist only as a result of expectation, can we truly say that we have lived. It’s the small grandeurs of life: going out for a walk, reading a book, talking to your friends, that lets us, upon death’s hand, say that it can take us without the fear of having unfinished business on this Earth.
“What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: ‘This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more’ … Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: ‘You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.”
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs
So go out with your friends, watch that movie you’ve been putting off for the more “responsible” alternative, allow yourself to bed-rot for just a while longer. Do Nothing. The world out there is more colourful, I promise.
Note: I refer you to the cover picture of this article. In pure nothingness, there would be absolutely Nothing – no light, no matter, no energy – and therefore there would be no colour or visual perception at all. But it is quite challenging to capture the absence of existence in a picture, so a black screen will have to do (with the Raffles Press logo).