I do a lot of dishes and laundry.

These two activities – unless you live in a nude colony and always eat out – are inescapable facts of life. Unlike training for a marathon or writing a novel, there are no compounded returns. There’s no muscle being toned. No skill being polished. You wash the dish, eat on it for the hundredth time, and wash it again. You wash the sweater, wear it, sweat in it while running errands, and back in the hamper it goes. I think most of us agree when Reverend Tish Warren says, “Everybody wants a revolution. Nobody wants to do the dishes.” ¹

But is the problem our Sisyphean pile of dirty clothes and dishes, or is it an unconscious belief that anything with no “ROI” should be outsourced or avoided at all costs? I’m concerned that the loudest voices in our modern (and online) world are sending a warped message about what it means to be productive and to “not waste time.”

These voices aren’t usually insidious. They mean well. But there’s a part of life they’re overlooking, and that’s the inescapably human, embodied part of life that requires us to do laundry and dishes no matter how busy and important we are.

What Is “Wasting Time,” Anyway?

To complicate this debate – in a good way – I turn to one of the foremost experts on the good life: psychologist and coiner of the term “flow state”, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

In his book Flow, he gives the example of a woman, E, who lives her life to the fullest in pursuit of stimulating goals: she’s a renowned scholar, a powerful business leader, a big-time networker, and a patron of the arts. “Not one minute of E’s life is wasted,” Csikszentmihalyi notes. “Usually she is writing, solving problems, reading one of the five newspapers or the earmarked sections of books…Very little of her time is spent on the routine functions of life.” (Emphasis mine). He also gives the example of R, a bookish man who’s more introverted than E but every bit as devoted to a life of intellectual intensity.  If E or R do any dishes, laundry, or vacuum Cheerio dust under the car seat, it’s not mentioned. My guess is, they don’t. ²

Does that mean that someone like me and maybe you too – someone who reads and is curious and strives after wisdom but who also spends a not-insignificant amount of time doing household work and caretaking (pets, children) – is less self-actualized than E and R? I don’t think that’s what C is saying, but it’s easy to assume so in a world obsessed with visible achievement.

Csikszentmihalyi concludes: “Each person allocates his or her limited attention either by focusing it intentionally like a beam of energy…or by diffusing it in desultory, random movements.” He makes no distinction between people who read political journalism and people who do laundry. But you know what is “desultory” and “random”: trawling on your social media feed for hours on end; toggling between activities or devices because you aren’t sure what you even want and are afraid to find out.

In contrast, we can direct our attention “like a beam of energy” on anything worth doing. That includes even the humblest and most mundane activities of life. Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh puts the problem of rushing from one activity to the next beautifully:

If while washing dishes, we think only of the cup of tea that awaits us, thus hurrying to get the dishes out of the way as if they were a nuisance, then we are not “washing the dishes to wash the dishes.” What’s more, we are not alive during the time we are washing the dishes. In fact we are completely incapable of realizing the miracle of life while standing at the sink. If we can’t wash the dishes, the chances are we won’t be able to drink our tea either. While drinking the cup of tea, we will only be thinking of other things, barely aware of the cup in our hands. Thus we are sucked away into the future—and we are incapable of actually living one minute of life. ³

Brother Lawrence, a 17th-century Carmelite priest, gives a Christian flavor to this same concept: “We ought not to be weary of doing little things for the love of God, who regards not the greatness of the work, but the love with which it is performed.” It’s worth noting that Brother Lawrence was the cook in his monastery, so he was all too familiar with the ritual of dish-washing. ⁴

If you have to do the laundry or dishes – and almost all of us do – then embrace that moment as one in which you’re alive and one you can’t store away and retrieve later to focus on something more important. The universe makes no distinction between moments in which ecstatic and interesting things are happening and moments in which “boring” and repetitive things are happening. All of these moments make up the fabric of your precious, fleeting life.

Time spent on doing dishes and laundry is not time wasted. The only time that’s wasted is time in which you’re not paying attention.

 “Concentrate Like a Roman”

Marcus Aurelius, 2^nd century C.E. emperor of Rome, would know better than just about anyone how easy it is to scoff at tasks that seem trifling. But he’s also too aware of human nature to give in to his impatience.

Here is the Stoic emperor’s version of embracing the laundry and dishes:

Concentrate every minute like a Roman— like a man— on doing what’s in front of you with precise and genuine seriousness, tenderly, willingly, with justice. And on freeing yourself from all other distractions. Yes, you can— if you do everything as if it were the last thing you were doing in your life, and stop being aimless, stop letting your emotions override what your mind tells you, stop being hypocritical, self-centered, irritable. You see how few things you have to do to live a satisfying and reverent life? If you can manage this, that’s all even the gods can ask of you. ⁵

I used to be much more annoyed at having to empty the dishwasher and the laundry hamper, until I realized that the point isn’t to finish the dishes or the laundry or clean up after the dog for once and for all. If there is an end to any of these activities, then my actual life is at an end – or at least, the most worthwhile parts of it. Being a mother to a child and an energetic dog has brought more repetitive activity into my life, but by the same stroke, more joy and meaning. The repetitive activities themselves are not what makes life frustrating or beautiful – it’s how you concentrate (or fail to) in the moments you are doing them.

Don’t be in a hurry to finish what’s in front of you and go somewhere else. Not every moment can be an intense one filled with “accomplishment,” nor should it be. I’ve found that life is sweetest when the intense and demanding moments, and even the exciting ones, are tempered with quiet rituals to give rhythm to my life. Be patient with the dishes and laundry, and you may find your life is more extraordinary than you realize – and I don’t think the gods could ask for any more than that.

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Read Next: The Lost Art of Radical Attention →

1. Warren, T. H. (2016). Liturgy of the ordinary: Sacred practices in everyday life. IVP Formatio.
2. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2008). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (1st ed.). Harper Perennial Modern Classics.
3. Nhat Hanh, T. (1999). The miracle of mindfulness: An introduction to the practice of meditation (M. Vo-Dinh, Trans.). Beacon Press. (Original work published 1975)
4. Brother Lawrence. (1982). The practice of the presence of God (Kindle ed.). Whitaker House. (Original work published ca. 1692)
5. From The Meditations.