On Saturday morning, I was talking to a neighbour. I asked him what he was going to be doing that day. He told me he intended to “potter about in the garden”.
“Doing what?” I asked.
“Prune bushes and rake up some leaves. Possibly do some weeding. That kind of thing.”
“I don’t think that’s Pottering About,” I told him. “I think that Pottering About is doing random things or activities while continually moving around with no discernible plan. But you intend to carry out certain tasks. If you actually intend to do those tasks, they can’t possibly be random and so you’re not Pottering About - in my opinion.”
He disagreed and maintained that he would be Pottering About because as far as he was concerned, that meant doing useful but unimportant jobs with no time pressure and that, he told me, was what he would be doing.
I think he is wrong because I don’t think that you can actually plan to Potter About. I feel that Pottering About is only something you realise you’ve done in retrospect or with hindsight and so it could be an answer to a question such as, “What did you do today?” but not, “What will you be doing today?”
I told him that he would be gardening and not pottering.
Some people think that Pottering About is just another way of saying “wasting time”. It isn’t because there are some potentially positive aspects to Pottering About .
Pottering About allows the mind to wander. It gives your subconscious mind the time to process experiences or thoughts you are having. It can reduce mental stress by focusing on simple, non-demanding activities.
Pottering About can give you a sense of accomplishment and even perhaps, a feeling of triumph as it can create a sense of having done something useful. Also, for those of us who lead predominantly sedentary lives, it can be the source of gentle exercise and that has to be beneficial.
I played in a league cricket match once that ended in a dull draw followed by a heated argument between our captain and a batsman who was not out at the close of the innings.
We had needed around 220 to win in 47 overs and at the close of play, we were about 200 for 5 and so, the game was drawn. The batsman who had (justifiably in my opinion) incurred the wrath of the captain, was 53 not out from more than 90 balls.
“You weren’t trying to win the game,” yelled the skipper. “You were just Pottering About, playing for yourself and you never intended to do anything else.”
However, according to my criterion, if the batsman had actually intended to bat that way from the start of his innings, he was not Pottering About at all.
He was just selfish.
