How do you redirect the impulse to do things for your kids that they can do themselves?
It’s such a process—first of self-awareness and understanding when you’re jumping in to solve someone else’s problems even when they should do it, and then realizing that your over-functioning causes deficits in other people’s skill development. I’m not just talking about my kids; I’m talking about my parents and my sibling and everyone in my life. I had over-functioned on every front, and once I pulled back and recognized the impulse to jump in and help, which happens to me a thousand times a day, I learned to quiet it and then see what happened. Once I started quieting it, which was very uncomfortable, and waiting to see what happened, which is also very uncomfortable, I was so pleasantly surprised. I learned I had been so arrogant and so controlling that, of course, everyone around me now actually wants to hang out with me instead of that eldest-daughter meme of “Oh God, here she comes.” I still think there’s a little streak of that, but I think I’m much more pleasant to be around.
Who are some of your doing-less icons?
Everyone I know does too much. It’s just kind of the nature of a coastal, high-achieving milieu, right? When I first handed in the book and we were talking about who I wanted to blurb it, she does so much, so I feel crazy even bringing her up, but as far as an aspirational lifestyle icon: Nigella Lawson.
Totally.
She was one of them, and then on the other end is Jenny Odell, who wrote How to Do Nothing. I read it right when it came out and was like, I need to start rethinking my relationship to time. That is probably really where the seed for this book started. Nigella and Jenny Odell are both women who do a lot, but they seem to enjoy and appreciate what they’re doing.
