Better Than Nothing

My partner and I argue a lot about our complementary laziness. I'm a perfectionist in ways he finds absurd (if I don't have one ingredient for a recipe or mustard for a sandwich, I would rather eat something else entirely than eat a lackluster version), and he's a perfectionist in ways I find absurd (did he really need to spend time reading the entire washing machine manual to learn what one function does?).

One argument I remember often is over exercise. If I only have time to do one push-up, I argue, I might as well not even bother doing anything. He is adamant that it's "better than nothing."

It got me thinking about the possibility that something could be worse than nothing, if the end result is that you've deluded yourself into thinking you've accomplished something. Wouldn't it be more useful in the long run to do nothing, feel a bit of conscience nag at you every time you did nothing, and eventually make a plan to do an increasing number of push-ups every day, rather than do one push-up per day, tell yourself it's "better than nothing," and pat yourself on the back despite receiving little to no strength or endurance increases and having no long-term plan for improvement?

I come back to this philosophical question whenever I try to find a language learning community. It seems there is no end to the number of apps, social groups, podcasts, methods, flim-flammers on YouTube and TikTok filled to the brim with people "learning" a language, who have spent seven years learning how to say "My name is" or "I have a black dog." People who start over with the same basics in the same languages every time they tire of the current app, making no real progress, having no real conversations, engaging not at all with anything real in the target language.

There's a kind of passive, idle curiosity and disinterested scrolling in the language learning world that is emblematic of a lot of how people seem to currently experience life as a sidecar to one's phone. I watch people on their phones when I'm out, and they're just kind of looking without seeing, not even finishing one 10 second video before flicking to the next one. At the end of an hours-long self-hypnosis session, does it feel like time well spent? Does one feel well-rested, calmed, soothed, as one was seeking? Is the boredom assuaged? Is the negative feeling dissipated? Would it have been better to stare at the flowers and trees, the children playing, the birds nesting, to do literally nothing, than to do the worse than nothing of whatever it is normal people do on the internet now?

I try not to care what strangers are making of their own lives (too much), but it is lonely to be active and motivated when it is not the norm.