Have you ever had a friend text you that they were running late and felt a wave of relief wash over you? Or had someone cancel an appointment at the last minute and you thought, “Thank God. Now I have time for (insert task).”? That was you enjoying an unexpected dose of something glorious: slack.
But slack doesn’t have to happen by accident. You can build slack into your schedule by not filling every moment of every day with obligations, tasks, and stimuli. An unfilled gap between activities might seem like wasted time, but it isn’t. Slack comes with a host of benefits that we tend to overlook and undervalue.
And slack isn’t just about having time to spare.
You can create slack in your budget by spending less than you earn. You can earn slack with your customers by delivering above and beyond their expectations. You can cultivate slack in a relationship by putting more in than you take out, complimenting more than criticizing, connecting more than competing.
Having slack means having a buffer – a margin for error that adds security to your position. Employees who are overqualified have slack. Bosses who take great care of their employees have slack. Students who study early and often have slack. A person who exercises regularly and eats well has slack. A healthy ecosystem has slack.
The opposite of slack is tension: just scraping by, always teetering precariously on the edge of disaster. Tension is associated with procrastination, doing the bare minimum, overscheduling yourself, deficit spending, unhealthy choices, and abusing your resources. It might seem like the right move in the short run, but it rarely works out in the long run.
The tension from having no slack is a feeling most of us are familiar with: anxiety. And that brings us to the first benefit of cultivating slack:
1. Less Stress
Sprinting from task to task without any time to spare is a great way to overload yourself with needless stress. Instead, build in buffer time between your obligations. This gives you room to breathe, time to recover.
If you’re working on your own schedule or charging through items on a to-do list, you can create bits of slack by taking microbreaks between tasks. You don’t have to stop for so long that you lose your productive momentum. Just pausing for a few moments to do nothing gives your brain a chance to reset, which does a great job reducing your stress.
Always leaving for work at the last minute is a great way to feel more stressed. Racking up credit card debt is too. So is neglecting your chores and hoping your spouse doesn’t notice. If you want less stress, create more slack.
2. Resilience
“Systems with slack are more resilient. The few extra minutes of time aren’t wasted, the same way that a bike helmet isn’t wasted if you don’t have a crash today. That buffer will save the day, sooner or later.” –Seth Godin1
Without slack, you’re not resilient. Without slack, you’ve got no margin for error. Any setback, any inconvenience, anything that doesn’t go according to plan can throw off your whole schedule or your whole budget.
If Google Maps says the drive takes 30 minutes, budget 40. Otherwise, an unexpected bit of traffic will make you late. If you think a task is going to take you 90 minutes, budget two hours. Otherwise, any unexpected setbacks will force you to do a rushed job or not finish at all. Don’t schedule your meetings back-to-back because that leaves no margin for people being late, meetings running long, or extra time for genuine connection.
Other forms of slack make you more resilient as well. Lower your blood pressure and cholesterol, and you’ll have more slack for heart disease. Do favors for your friends, and you’ll have more slack in your relationships. Set aside money in an emergency fund, and you’ll have more slack in your budget. Improve your professional skillset, and you’ll have more slack in your career. All these things make you more resilient. Invest in your future selves by cultivating slack today.
3. Creativity
Without slack, you’re less creative. And remember, creativity is for everyone, and it is an essential component of becoming better.
Creativity requires time to work on creative projects, and if you’re overscheduled with obligations, you won’t be able to do that. Creativity also requires relentless learning, which also takes time. Lastly, creativity requires downtime between tasks. As long as you don’t fill that downtime with phone time or other stimuli, you’ll tap into the power of diffuse-mode thinking, which helps with both learning and creativity.1 (Read A Mind for Numbers
to learn more.) That’s a case for slack and ditching your smartphone more often.
In fact, our phones may be the leading cause of slack-deficiency. Before the advent of smartphones, we spent a lot more time being bored between tasks. When you had to wait in line, you just waited. When your friend was late for lunch, you just waited. Now we fill those little gaps with surfing, scrolling, and texting. But those little gaps were slack, and you can reclaim them to your benefit. The simplest way to add more slack into your days is to spend more time in airplane mode.
The Myth of Wasted Time
We are constantly exhorted to not waste time. We’re told that life is short and time is limited, so seize the day! And we’ve taken this to mean that we should fill every waking minute of every day with, well, something. Otherwise, we’re wasting our lives.
This is bogus.
Slack isn’t wasted time, no more than sleep or time with loved ones is wasted time. Slack is valuable, and it’s made all the more valuable by our present lack of it.
1 Godin, Seth. “Investing in slack.” June 15, 2019.
2 Oakley, Barbara. A Mind for Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science (Even If You Flunked Algebra) Penguin, 2014.