Discover another artform – the pleasure of “pottering”
When did doing nothing in particular become something to feel guilty about?
We have become remarkably good at turning life into a list. Walk 10,000 steps. Drink enough water. Read more. Declutter the cupboard. Call someone. Learn something new. Exercise your brain. Organise your finances. Have a hobby. Stay socially connected.
Even retirement, which was once supposed to offer freedom from schedules, can begin to resemble another full-time job.
Perhaps it is time to rediscover the underrated pleasure of pottering.
What exactly is pottering?
Pottering is difficult to define because, rather wonderfully, it has no objective.
You wander onto the balcony to water a plant and notice that the basil needs repotting. While looking for a pot, you find an old photograph. You sit down to look at it, make yourself a cup of tea, straighten a bookshelf on the way back and spend ten minutes watching a pair of mynas quarrelling outside the window.
Two hours have passed.
What have you achieved?
Possibly nothing.
And that is precisely the point.
We have made productivity a virtue
For much of our lives, time is spoken for.
There are examinations to pass, careers to build, children to raise, parents to care for, homes to run, bills to pay and deadlines to meet. We learn to measure a successful day by how much we have accomplished.
Then life changes.
Yet the habit of measuring ourselves by productivity often remains.
A quiet afternoon can somehow feel wasteful. Sitting with a cup of tea without simultaneously checking your phone feels almost rebellious. We feel we ought to be doing something.
But surely one of the privileges of growing older is earning the right to stop proving that every hour has been put to good use.
Pottering is different from boredom
Boredom says, There is nothing to do.
Pottering says, Let’s see what happens.
It might mean rearranging flowers, polishing an old piece of silver, sorting through a drawer, browsing through a cookbook without intending to cook anything, feeding the birds or walking to the corner shop simply because you feel like it.
There is no target and no stopwatch.
You follow your curiosity rather than your calendar.
And in a world increasingly organised by notifications, appointments and algorithms, that small freedom can feel surprisingly luxurious.
Leave a little empty space
We are often encouraged to fill our later years.
Travel. Volunteer. Join a club. Take a course. Learn a language. Start a second career. Reinvent yourself.
All wonderful suggestions — if you want them.
But you don’t have to turn the rest of your life into a self-improvement project.
Some days can simply be ordinary.
You can read three pages of a book and fall asleep. Spend far too long deciding where a plant looks happiest. Call an old friend without having anything important to say. Sit by a window when it rains.
Not every experience needs to become an achievement.
The lost art of wasting time
Perhaps what we call “wasting time” is sometimes simply experiencing time.
Children understand this instinctively. They can examine an ant for ten minutes, turn a cardboard box into a house or stare at clouds without wondering whether the activity is productive.
Somewhere along the way, adults forget.
Maybe growing older gives us an opportunity to remember.
So this weekend, leave one little corner of your day unplanned.
Don’t optimise it. Don’t count it. Don’t post it.
Make some tea. Wander around. Pick up a book. Look out of the window. Follow wherever the next small impulse takes you.
Potter a little.
After a lifetime of having somewhere to be, there is something rather wonderful about occasionally going nowhere at all.