> You do not move yourself closer to your goals when you do a puzzle with your toddler. Or when you pause to observe the beauty of a sunset. These aren’t produc

> You do not move yourself closer to your goals when you do a puzzle with your toddler. Or when you pause to observe the beauty of a sunset. These aren’t productive activities. I would argue that every non-targeted activity still has some end, however unconscious or hard to measure. If your goal is to be a good father, doing a puzzle with your toddler is one tiny piece of that goal, however mindless/mundane it may feel. Sometimes I think that our brains are like rock tumblers, and that even something seemingly worthless like zoning out in front of a TV can serve a purpose to take a particular edge off one of the rocks we've got tumbling around. The trick is figuring out when we're done wearing that edge and should spur ourselves to do something else.