10/22/25 — Setting Down the Hammer (Journal Entry Dissection: #Time #Distraction #Balance)
- Kurt Bell
- 2 days ago
- 2 min read
About These Posts
Each day I add a new journal entry to my social media feeds. Here, I take that day’s entry and expand it through the lens of my Good Life Creed, which you can read about in my book Going Alone (available for free on this website). These dissections aim to connect ordinary reflections with the enduring objectives and principles of the Creed.
Journal Entry (10/22/25)
I’m working each day to loosen a lifelong habit of needing to be productive. I’m like a carpenter who keeps his hammer long after the house is built and the residents have moved in—wandering about, still looking for nails to drive straight and true. One option is to start another project. Another is to trade this hammer for a different tool, one better suited to the next distraction. But there’s a third idea, quieter and more unsettling: to simply set the hammer down and not pick up another. To walk on with empty hands.
I’m drawn to this last possibility—as if it might be a very good use of time. Others have found their way forward like this. I wonder if I can, too.
Dissection
This reflection explores the lifelong tension between productivity and peace. To set down the hammer is not to abandon purpose, but to consider whether stillness itself might serve as a higher form of work—the labor of simply being present.
#Time (Objective: Make Good and Effective Use of Time and Resources)
This is the questioning of what “use” really means. After decades of doing, the idea that rest might also be a form of meaningful time becomes both radical and deeply human.
#Distraction (Principle of Distraction)
The instinct to replace one project with another reveals the mind’s resistance to stillness. Recognizing that impulse—and choosing not to follow it—is a quiet act of self-mastery.
#Balance (Principle of Balance)
Here lies the reconciliation between doing and being. Balance is not found by erasing effort, but by letting action and inaction share the same space—each completing the other.
Takeaway
To set the hammer down is not to quit, but to change the shape of purpose itself. Sometimes the most meaningful act is to let the day unfold without plans, and to see what happens when there’s nothing left to fix.
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