Ruminations-Atelic Vs Telic

The term atelic activity came to me while reading Oliver Burkeman’s book Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals (Burkeman 2021). The book is about the very contemporary malaise affecting our society: the lack of time, or more accurately, our lack of success in “managing” our time. Burkeman approaches time management from a different perspective, an alternative one, as Burkeman is wont to do. The definition of atelic appears in Chapter 9: Rediscovering Rest. Burkeman cites Kieran Setiya’s book (Setiya 2018) for the original definition, which is: an activity whose value does not derive from its telos, or ultimate aim. We are conditioned to live our lives in a goal-oriented world, a telic world, which is a world where we have lost our ability to pursue an activity for the sake of taking part in the activity. One synonym that is often equated with atelic activities is that of a hobby, because a hobby is something we do just to do. The example Burkeman uses is hiking: just hiking, to partake in nature, to just do rather than hiking for the sake of something tangible, like better health or to travel from one point to the other.

Hobbies have come to have a negative connotation in our society; hobbies are judged to be purposeless and inconsequential because hobbies are something we do outside of our serious mission of being cogs in the economic engine. This bias becomes obvious as we seek a definition for atelic. Words like unfinished, incomplete, dreadful, revolting or repulsive are used to define the term. Atelic pursuits have been judged as an activity best befitting a dilettante; someone whose interest in any subject which is considered to be of a superficial rather than professional nature. Which leads us to another distinction that is also assumed in our culture, that of the generalist.

David Epstein’s Range (Epstein 2019) dives into the distinction between generalists and specialists: a generalist would be more likely to pursue a subject, any subject in an atelic  manner. Epstein discourses on the advantage that a generalist, an amateur who is more likely to study a topic as an outsider; someone, who by virtue of their ignorance of the prior arts, are concomitantly, more likely to treat any problem with curiosity while not being affected by opinions and experiences that are distorted by insider bias. This is often the difference between having unconventional ideas for solutions versus staying with the same solutions that loops around the same assumptions and well-trod solutions.

The generalist, i.e., amateur, is more likely to pursue subjects in an atelic manner. Their purpose is not to search for A solution for specific situations within specific contexts. Their purpose is to learn and gather information, accrue experience, integrate those into knowledge, with their sights set on learning and doing for the sake of learning and doing.  The amateur solutions may often be unfeasible, unrealistic, or illogical, but that is where the most original thinking comes from. It also goes without saying that the amateur’s process is probably the least efficient and most time-consuming.

Burkeman specifically emphasized that we hobbyists/dilettantes/atelic activity pursuers are more likely to be only good enough at whatever it is that we choose to indulge in, but not be at an expert level. We are amateurs in the best sense of the word. The key driving force is our passion rather than necessity, hence the aversion to deadlines and timetables. Deadlines and timetables dampen, defuses, and deflates the passion.

It wasn’t until I was knee deep in the muck of my professional engineering life that I discovered that I not only did not fit into my well-defined and constrained role as R & D engineer as dictated by the industry, but the role was also antithetical to my natural inclinations. Of course, I didn’t know enough at that time to classify my passions as being atelic or that I was better attuned to be a generalist. One of the first indications that I was a round peg trying to fit into square holes was early in my career while I was having a conversation with a fellow engineer. We were speaking about Number Theory, he just could not understand the value of something that cannot obviously be applied to engineering, asserting that if it doesn’t serve a practical purpose then it is just a waste of time. While I had always marveled at the broad vision and insight demonstrated and are needed by mathematicians. This is not to say that my head was completely in the clouds. After all I was trained in engineering and not in the pure sciences, I appreciated engineering and more often than not, I indulged in the same applications orientation.  Even as I reveled in my role as a problem solver, I also enjoyed the opportunities that my “hobbies” gave me to wander aimlessly.

Nothing made me happier than when I was researching and learning for my job, ostensibly in search of practical solutions to the short-term problems that occurred in my daily engineering responsibilities; but I found my thrill in the act of learning, the application of the result of the learning was a natural follow-through. I reveled in the discovery rather than the implementation of the solution. 

This is the reason that David Epstein’s idea of the generalists versus specialists resonated with me. I finished reading his book after I came to the realization that my efforts at being an engineer in the corporate environment were desultory, that my intellectual inclinations were mismatched with the needs of my chosen role in an industry-oriented profession, which caused me to be intellectually disengaged. My temperament was more aligned with that of a generalist, someone who Stays Calm and Know Things. Someone who has a hard time justifying their existence in a corporate culture, where answers to specific questions in a timely manner are required. No one knew what to do with someone like me, someone who has a broad general knowledge of many things. I was fortunate that I worked with many managers who saw value in my skills and temperament, even though I hadn’t been aware of those skills and temperament myself. I served my employers well when their needs and my talents aligned, they did not waste their time or money on me, but I also did not fully develop into what they wanted. It was at this point, after I made the connection, that I narrowed the focus of my attention to my atelic pursuits.

My passions were for learning, for the accumulation of knowledge which served to satisfy my own curiosity rather than satisfying external needs. The word curiosity appeared prominently on my radar at that point in my life. I indulged in reading, researching,  and learning to answer my curiosity. Yet, as happy as I was doing what I was doing; I was still feeling guilty about not having an anchor, a project-oriented focus to my intellectual life, a timeline to measure against. I convinced myself that I was doing all these things to help my teaching and coaching just to justify the time that I was using to happily meander, pick up digressions and tangential topics at will as they piqued my curiosity. Even though my research did eventually help me in my teaching and coaching, the result was beside the point rather than being the point.

Indeed, my experience as a generalist and practicing atelic work has an added benefit. Doing for the sake of doing put me in the rarified space that many have experienced, and I had previously spoken of: being in the flow. (https://polymathtobe.blogspot.com/2023/01/volleyball-coaching-life-thoughts-are.html).

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi defines the state of flow as: “Being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away.  Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you’re using your skills to the utmost.” (Csikszentmihalyi 1990) Which nicely links the atelic with being in the flow.

Edward Slingerland defines wu-wei , the Taoists term for the idea of flow as: the dynamic, effortless, and unselfconscious state of mind of a person who is optimally active and effective. (Slingerland 2014). Which also ignores any mention of results or constraints, time or otherwise.

I will inevitably lose myself to the flow as I apply myself to my atelic activities. Time disappears and labor is not labor but joy. In other words, I was Doing by not Trying. Applying effortless effort to my activities. Accomplishing without trying. The ideas have intertwined in my mind so that being atelic is  synonymous with being in the flow.

My opus operandi now are to have open-ended inquiries at various stages of disarray, both in my mind and in what I had written down. Termination dates of all the inquiries are not even secondary or tertiary, they just aren’t important, as my curiosity drives me to continuing the path towards just doing without end. Completion or mastery are not the central questions, my curiosity comes first. The benefit of this approach is that I never give up on any activity, I just put them to rest for a bit as I contemplate the intellectual difficulties and conceptual challenges.

I still have telic tasks, and I do them diligently, with the internal logic that the sooner I can get it done the sooner I get to wander and wonder. It is impossible to just do the atelic things in our lives, one just cannot survive in the world. Burkeman acknowledges this, his point is that societal pressures and pragmatic considerations have driven us to the point where even if we were to pursue anything in an atelic vein, most would be unable to do so because our socially programmed and acculturated response would be to subconsciously treat the atelic as telic. We would set goals, create Gantt charts, and place undue psychological pressures on ourselves because that is what we do through our procedural response to anything.

I would conjecture that my life is now split evenly between the atelic and the telic. Too much of a good thing can become mundane and rob me of the pleasures of the change of pace. We should not nor do not live by bread alone.

1.     References

Burkeman, Oliver. Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals. Dublin, IRE: Vintage, 2021.

Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. NYC: HarperCollins, 1990.

Epstein, David. Range, Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World. New York : Riverhead Books., 2019.

Setiya, Kieran. Midlife: A Philosophical Guide. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018.

Slingerland, Edward. Trying Not to Try: The Art and Science of Spontaneity. NYC: Crown, 2014.