Sweeping the sidewalk

"A house well taken care of is a life not lived." This provocative statement, which I stumbled upon in Oliver Burkeman's Four Thousand Weeks, keeps nagging at me. At face value, it makes total sense. Any time spent on keeping the house is not devoted to more valuable and fulfilling activities. Nothing to disagree with there, right?

Get a cleaner. That is the universal advice when busyness takes over your life. As a freelance consultant, founder and father of three, I can only relate. To-dos will only expand, and Parkinson's Law will very effectively do its job. Work and family will confabulate against you, and you will very soon feel that your schedule is only full of obligations. Your time just needs to be protected. Anything that costs less than you earn should be automatically delegated.

Here is the thing with that logic, though: most of the time I get this delegate-to-liberate mantra, although disguised as a well-intended get-more-life solution, it ends up being a way to just do more. To work more. To produce more. Just a few days ago I had an interesting debate in a group with high-output solo-consultants from different corners of the world, and there was a clear consensus around the idea that the mundane should not distract you from the important. Ultimately, that is: your work. Just like that, busyness has transformed into yet more business.

Even those who are spinning off chores to actually carve more me-time for themselves are usually falling into the efficiency trap, as Burkeman calls it. In a world obsessed with productivity, even our downtime is often framed as something to optimize. Unnoticed, you have substituted keeping the house with keeping the streak, pushing even harder, running in an endless race towards a checkpoint that is relentlessly moving ahead of you.

Burkeman shares a clear example of this mechanic, extracted from Ruth Schwartz Cowan's book More Work for Mother:

The bar is always going higher, and we're eternally dragging. And it’s not just that the ceiling is only going up, the ground is also falling under our feet. The unstoppable advance of technology is removing us from the inner workings of life. Anything that can be optimized will be optimized. Anything that can be automated will be automated. Anything that can be AI-ed will be AI-ed. And although that might sound appealing, even liberating sometimes, it's actually making many of us miserable, because we are not ready to stop. We are not ready to be unproductive.

Just the other day I read the story about Vinay Hiremath, founder of Loom, and his existential drain after selling the company for nearly $1 billion. At first glance, this seems far removed from the question of household chores, yet it is driven by the same underlying logic: a life structured almost entirely around output, achievement, and forward motion, with very little space left for simply being, can very easily lead to disconnection and eternal dissatisfaction. Jim Carrey put it beautifully in this bit from his infamous Golden Globe Awards speech:

Let's face it: chores have a bad rap, and they rarely make it to the top of anyone's priority list. Not just because they are inconvenient, but especially because they distract us. The question would be: from what? There is actually depth, and beauty, and meaning, in devoting yourself to the mundane doings of everyday life. And I am not just talking about the household now. This applies to everything. Business included.

There is something meditative, even restorative, about caring for your surroundings. About tending to your environment with presence and care. Even if most of the time no one even notices, there is a quiet satisfaction in taking care of the little things around. Carving out time to tidy up and freshen up your table, your room, or the kitchen can bring a kind of clarity that feels rare in an always-busy world. The same applies to your company, your department, or your own practice as a professional. Maintenance is important.

And this does not mean you should be doing it all, of course. There is nothing inherently noble about exhaustion, and for many people, home labour is just a daily struggle for survival that needs tackling. My point here is about reflecting on what we lose when we remove ourselves entirely from the maintenance of our own lives, once we have the option to do so. But it definitely means you should not remove yourself completely from the small tasks. Even if they feel insignificant. Invaluable. Unclassy even.

This idea reminds me of the lovely little book by Shoukei Matsumoto: A Monk's Guide to a Clean House & Mind. In the book, Matsumoto painstakingly describes a Buddhist monk's cleaning rituals. But it's really not just about the chore itself —even though the book is deliciously thorough on the nitty-gritty of it. It's really a kind of meditation, a way of being present. He talks about sweeping, wiping, and tidying as a ritual, as an act of mindfulness, a way to clear your mind while caring for your place. A way to find peace in the small, deliberate actions that make up our days.

I grew up in a small town in the Pyrenees, and there is something I used to see all the time: people sweeping their own bit of sidewalk. It was just part of life: early in the morning, you'd hear the soft swish of brooms as neighbours tidied up the patch of ground outside their doors. It's less common now with taller buildings and busier schedules, but you can still find many house owners and local businesses doing it. I've always found that simple act grounding. Sweeping your own front step feels like a metaphor for something bigger: the quiet value in taking care of what's yours, and what we all share. Not putting yourself too high up, and showing up, down there, doing your bit.

That's the real joy in the mundane: it pulls you back to now. It's easy to get caught up chasing big moments and grand plans, dreaming about the next big award, but when you learn to appreciate them, life happens in those little things. In a way, these everyday tasks —whether it's cleaning the space, clearing stuff, tending plants, or serving people— are opportunities to contribute deeply, from pause and focus. Andrew Wilkinson once said that his life principle is to make everything 20% better. Such a worthy goal, that you can never achieve by just removing yourself completely from the equation.

Order holds a special place in this ecosystem. When we spend time putting our surroundings in order, we're also creating a sense of order inside ourselves. Life is full of distractions, full of noise, but there's something steadying about dedicating even a few minutes to something as simple as straightening up. As Brianna Wiest puts it, in The Mountain is you:

More than a tidy home or workspace —a nice externality, though— the beauty is in what those moments of care represent. They're a reminder that we can be present and bring more clarity to our lives, even when things feel chaotic out there. Especially when things feel chaotic out there. There's power in that.

Get a cleaner if you need to, but remember that every little effort to care for your space is a way of reconnecting with yourself and the present moment. A life without maintenance quickly becomes a life without contact. Give yourself a chance to get out of the mill, and remember that life’s beauty is often found in the smallest, most ordinary acts.