Have you tried doing nothing?
We live in a fast-paced world. Everyone is so busy 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year. Work, school, chores, childcare, travel, shopping, binge-watching, updating social media and whatnot. We are in constant pursuit of things or tend to become workaholics, and we continue to do more today for something we want for tomorrow. And it is all happening so fast that we have had no time to realise how it is affecting us, the people around us, our relationships and most importantly, our well-being.
We are the busiest generation in human history. We feel productive when we are busy, and therefore, we fill up our time with activities after activities, some essential and some fillers. But doing nothing from time to time is good too. While we all have responsibilities, we still need to find time to do nothing.
Well, what is doing nothing?
If you are someone who has a packed routine and have been busy for years now, you’d probably get baffled by the idea of doing nothing. Doing nothing doesn’t mean you drop everything and just sit around for the rest of your life but only that you set aside time to do nothing. It could be about 10 to 30 minutes a day on a daily basis or taking an entire day off to do nothing once every few weeks. During this time, you plan to do nothing, to just be with yourself and in the present with no agenda. Not paying bills or running errands, reading news, checking your social media pages or figuring out what to say in the next meeting. Your mind needs a bit of inactivity, a blank space now and then.
Doing nothing can energise you to do more
It is essential to have those moments of absolutely no activity to give yourself some rest, with no pressure of achieving something. Doing nothing might seem like finding a reason not to be productive. Think of the lifestyle of people just a few decades ago. How engaged were they back then?
Neurologist, Marcus Raichle, says that the activity in the resting state helps the brain to stay organized. Our brains never really shut off. The brain uses the time you spend on nothing to clean up, refresh, remember, learn, reflect and more. By doing nothing, you give your brain the time to get into its default mode, during which the brain may access neural networks of the past, activate deep analysis and predict the future. This helped our ancestors get curious and look for answers to many questions they were presented with.
Taking time off from activities periodically helps you unwind, and relax. It helps you improve your mood, cognitive ability, and overall mental health. Studies in neuroscience show that doing nothing improves creativity and imagination, thus, improving your productivity and ability to focus and learn. It helps you feel rejuvenated and energised many a time.
How to do nothing?
Doing nothing is promoted in so many practices, be it in Zen philosophy or Buddhist meditation or the Dutch art of Niksen. Doing nothing as a practice is good for you. Yet, you’d be surprised to know that it is not an easy task. We have trained our mind and body to be doing something during all of our waking hours for decades. Trying to take time off and observe things as it occurs around you, within you and in your brain in the present might seem a little difficult, in the beginning.
Take the time to find the way into it. Learn from animals! Do it without any goals and do not expect an outcome from the practice. Think of it as meditation or time off from everything to let your brain do its thing. Block your calendar to do nothing for a few minutes every day, or take a day off to do nothing once every few weeks.