Pottering: A Cure for Modern Life

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Recommended if you want a fast, light read to shake you out of a rut - but don't read it too fast or you’ll miss the message. Don’t try too hard. To try and potter perfectly misses the point. Embrace imperfection. When your ambition is slight and your requirements are limited, ditching perfection really helps keep the pressure off. Only when you are able to gain satisfaction from the humblest of tasks, short in duration and seemingly inconsequential, will you have become a true potterer. The dictionary definition is rather too dismissive for my liking: ‘Potter verb: occupy oneself in a desultory but pleasant manner, doing a number of small tasks or not concentrating on anything in particular.’

Stay local. Be in your local area and community. Wander down to the shops (they need you) and interact with your neighbours with a wave and a ‘hello’.Like this article? Sign up to our newsletter to get more articles like this delivered straight to your inbox. Three years ago, McGovern had a full-time job, three young children and an ageing father she was caring for. She recognised she had “done a bit too much for a bit too long” and decided to use her holiday to take the same day off each week for several months. “After a period of intensity in my life, I felt I needed some time off and it was incredibly beneficial – more than I ever thought, because I’d given myself permission to have a rest.”

Keep moving. The present participle of the infinitive ‘to potter’ implies continuity, seamlessly going from one activity to another. By being completely absorbed in rummaging, sorting and re-arranging objects, you achieve flow. You are never still. In the book Pottering: A cure for modern life author Anna McGovern describes pottering in the following way: I saw this book in a gift shop on Maui and jotted down the title--not a book I need to own, but one I definitely wanted to read. The library got it for me and it is a *very* charming exploration of how to "potter about" (what Americans might more readily call "puttering"). McGovern's five guidelines for pottering each form the basis of a subsequent chapter:

DETACHED THREE BEDROOM HOME TWO MINUTES FROM EASNEY SEAFRONT WITH SELF CONTAINED ONE BEDROOM ANNEXE!!

Pottering – a peculiarly British pastime that evokes the shuffling sound of someone (quite possibly in slippers) going contentedly from one thing to the next – is something McGovern is good at. “I think you can lose yourself entirely while you’re pottering,” she says. “It’s a mental break, it’s completely unpressured and it frees you momentarily from all responsibility. It may seem inconsequential, but it has a uniquely restful effect, which I only discovered by chance.” As time opens up for all of us to spend more time in the garden, Alan Titchmarsh offers his tips on how to make sure you do it right. Pottering is not doing nothing, however. “Sitting around on your phone or watching a box set isn’t pottering,” says McGovern. Pottering is relaxing precisely because you are occupied in the gentlest of ways. “It’s as though you’ve lent a sheen of legitimacy to your unstructured downtime by doing something ever so slightly useful,” she says. Leaving something to soak, executing a minor repair on clothing, rearranging objects on a shelf are all prime examples of this.

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PS - Sitting down for 10 minutes, drinking a cup of tea and reading a book in between tasks is a valid pottering action! 😉 ignoring digital devices and limiting your access to them also means that you are not constantly bombarded with messages, information, unrealistic images of perfection and pictures of social occasions that you haven’t been invited to.” I adored reading it and felt so validated that so many things I already do on summers and weekends will qualify as "pottering." While I'd never have categorised it in those terms myself they make perfect sense as do the examples and explanations the author gives for each point.