“The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.” Bertrand Russell*

In my last Reflection I asked: useful to whom? The question behind the question was really about measurement, and who gets to do it. Russell’s observation takes that somewhere else. It doesn’t ask whether time is useful. Rather it asks whether it is enjoyed. Which is a rather different standard.

When people step back from full-time work, they often struggle with whether they're using their time "usefully." I hear it regularly. Sometimes from clients, sometimes from friends who've made the transition. The guilt isn't about being idle (though that may come into it). Rather, it's about not being useful enough. But useful to whom?

I read Enuma Okora's column in the FT this week (behind the FT Paywall). One paragraph stopped me:

"I have a friend who, whenever I ask how he's doing, takes a moment before answering. Often he'll then express two seemingly conflicting feelings. 'A part of me is feeling grounded and engaged but another part of me is also feeling anxious because I'm concerned about [xyz].' I've grown to admire his willingness to sit with multiple realities, and even to begin practising it myself."

That willingness to hold contradictions, to say "both things are true" without rushing to resolve them, is rare. We aren’t always comfortable with it. We would much prefer coherence.

I left my law firm nearly twelve years ago. It was the right decision. I had work lined up, consulting opportunities were emerging, and trustee roles were accumulating. On paper, the transition looked straightforward; in practice, it wasn't quite so simple. The difficulty wasn't the work itself. Rather it was the gap between knowing I'd made the right choice and feeling comfortable with it. Knowing you've earned the right to step back doesn't make stepping back immediately comfortable.

Oliver Burkeman, writing in his newsletter The Imperfectionist, reaches back to a book title that stopped me: Rabbi Alan Lew's This Is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared. Burkeman's point, characteristically, is not to alarm. Uncertainty, he argues, is not a temporary inconvenience. It is our basic state of existence. We are never ready. Not really. And waiting until we are ready is, in the end, just another way of not beginning.

I’ve recently been the sounding board for a friend who has been looking for a trustee role. So far without success but there will be one. Craig Coben, writing in the Financial Times last month, offers a sharp observation about professionals who join charity boards after long corporate careers: many miss institutional clout more than they expect. Board roles can become a way of preserving that authority in soft focus. It is an uncomfortable thought. But I suspect it deserves more honest attention than it usually receives.