Doing more useless things in your spare time can improve your efficiency, rejuvenate your energy, and help you concentrate on your work and life.
There is a housewife in my neighborhood, Auntie Li. Over the years, she has had to take care of her husband, her son's schooling, and the health of her in-laws.
Usually, these daily chores are enough to keep her busy, but no matter how trivial her life is, she has always tried to maintain three habits, which are waking up early every day to go for a run, reading the newspaper on her lunch break, and reading a book before going to bed.
It's hard to imagine a woman who has to make breakfast in a hurry every morning getting up early, listening to music, stepping to the beat, and running 5 kilometers around the park.
You can also hardly believe that a woman who shops at the market all day long will still care about national affairs, current affairs and politics, and read the financial newspaper.
You can hardly believe that a woman who has to wash dirty clothes all day would have time to read Shakespeare's works.
Over the years, women her age have always laughed at her for doing useless things that don't make your husband more attracted to you, or your son get better grades, or teach you to cook better meals.
But after 10 years of marriage, eight years of babies, and five years of being with her in-laws, she has not turned into a mediocre, complaining, greasy, middle-aged woman.
Instead, because of these daily hobbies, she has become more tolerant, more positive, and more full of spirit, still preserving the pure, passionate, and beautiful character of a young girl before marriage.
Zhou Guoping once said: "The world's flavorful things, including poetry, wine, philosophy, love, often useless. Recite useless poems, drunk useless wine, read useless books, clock useless love, finally become a useless person, but therefore live a flavorful life."
In fact, in life, more and more people, they become more and more numb, anxious, uninteresting.
All day long, they stay in their own small circle, surrounded by their own acreage, and live as bored city dwellers.
But those who love to do useless things, they can always in the ordinary day, expanding the territory, find more fresh, interesting, meaningful things, but also live more and more abundant.
In my yard, there is a school bully Juanjuan, not only in the school results are very good, high IQ. And when she enters the workplace, her emotional intelligence is also high.
If you say good grades, it's because you usually study hard. But the good character has a lot to do with the "useless" education she received from a young age.
When Juanjuan was three years old, her parents didn't let her learn too much about enlightenment; instead, whenever they had time, they would accompany her to stare at the blue sky, watch ants move under the apple tree, and pick up small stones to build a fort by the river.
When Juanzi was 13, it was even with a heavy school load, her parents would let her take 3 hours a week to learn to play the piano, ballet, and flute. They also took her on trips, exhibitions and concerts during the summer and winter vacations.
When Juanzi was 23, she was close to graduating and looking for a job. In addition to guiding her career planning, she would also tell her how to make a colorful and flavorful mapo tofu, and how to embroider a magnificent landscape painting. How to appreciate the wisdom of life in "Dream of the Red Chamber".
At first many people felt that Wang Juanjuan's parents were simply, deliberately letting their child lose at the starting line.
But Juanjuan has learned to love life, get close to nature, learn how to get along with others, and learn that there is more to life than just the exams and grades in front of you, and there are also poems, faraway places, the future and hope.
Remember what Chiang Hsun once said: "Give your children the best music, literature and movies, and accept nature. Schools and families must not become chicken farms and pig farms, breeding a group of tools that only know how to take tests."
In fact, in real life, many parents have a misconception that as long as they get good grades, they are good students.
In their view, learning English, attending tutorial classes and memorizing ancient texts are useful, while rolling in the grass, building snowmen in the cold wind and chasing sparrows in the fields are useless.
But when these so-called good students leave the constraints of school, the discipline of their parents, and the protection of the ivory tower, they become isolated, overwhelmed, and confused.
They don't know how to live an interesting life, how to face the time alone, how to make themselves happy?
In fact, really good students, in addition to excellent grades, must be moral, intellectual, physical, social and aesthetic all-round development, and the latter is thanks to the usual useless education.
We used to think that as long as we earned the gold and silver, gained the admiration of all people, and achieved amazing results, we can live a dignified, meaningful, and savory life.
So we began to become impatient, become only useful in the eyes of the money, performance and status. We have overlooked the fact that those useless moments in life are equally valuable.
It is remembered that Liang Wendao once said, "To read some useless books, to do some useless things, to spend some useless time, are all for the sake of retaining a chance to transcend oneself outside of all that is known, and some of the most remarkable changes in life come from such moments."
Maybe in the moments when you're tired at work, in the moments when you're worrying about the minutiae of life, in the times when you're struggling for grades.
Should learn to do some useless things, although they can not help you to solve the actual problem, but they can quietly bring you a positive state of mind, optimistic character, physical and mental stress reliever.
Maybe if you learn photography, you will not become a photographer, but as long as it will let you perceive the existence of beauty.
Perhaps you learn to paint, and will not become a painter, but it can enrich your spare time.
Maybe if you write, you won't become a writer, but it will purify your mind.
Gao Xiaosong once said: "The most important difference between human beings and animals is that animals do everything useful, in order to survive and reproduce. People, on the other hand, are different, and have to do many useless things, such as the piano, chess, calligraphy and painting, such as love and waiting."
In fact, in this world, there is no such thing as useless things, and the so-called uselessness is more in the sense of a balance.