Make Time To Do Nothing

Make Time To Do Nothing

Silence, Stillness, Calmness. That’s the art of doing nothing and my dog Remo is the master of that. Doing nothing.

 

For us, these 2 words “Doing nothing” can be seen as a waste of time and connotes a negative meaning of being lazy. On the contrary, being busy is a seal of approval, we wear the label like a badge of honor, validation, and proof of our worthiness. Sadly that’s how the world works, the earth continues to rotate no matter what. Even when half of the world is resting, another part of the world is hustling, and we take turns to do our parts. Non-stop action of doing things. The whole world is doing something every second, but there’s something we can learn from the art of doing nothing.

Let me list down some of the perks to “Make Time To Do Nothing” and how we can implement the art of doing nothing in our everyday lives. 

Doing nothing allows us to pay attention to our surroundings. I think most of us have experienced this in our lives. Travel to a touristy location and expecting to see an awesome view, but to our surprise, what we can see are crowds and crowds of tourists, taking the same picture, making the same pose. Not shaming anyone because I’m one of them. We’ll film down those memorable moments when we travel. Those are the visual aids that can help us pull back those memories. Spending all the time we have at a place we’ve never seen before on videoing. The one-shot is never enough, just in case this shot is smooth, we have a second shot. What seems to be the action of documenting the memories down for the future purpose, has become an action of occupying ourselves with a never-ending to-film list. We might come back from my trip with a hard disk full of outstanding footage, but our mind was probably empty. Staring at those videos we start to question ourself “was I standing at that place when I’m shooting?” This is because we can’t remember much about the breathtaking site. When we are experiencing something once in a lifetime, sometimes it’s fine to put down our cameras, and do nothing. Be present at the moment, because doing nothing allows us to pay attention to what’s in front of us. All we need is our 5 senses, absorb and feel our surroundings. The breathtaking view is right in front of us, but they only become perceptible and purposeful when we stop and do nothing but pay close attention to the world. This view might not cost much, but we have to pay one of the scarcest resources we have, our attention. But still, we can document down precious moments like this but also have some time doing nothing and appreciate what is in front of us. 

Next, doing nothing is a waste of time. That’s the reason why we can’t stop working, and also the disappearance of the boundaries between work, rest, and leisure. It makes sense because our day only consists of 24 potentially monetizable hours no more or less. Time is one of the most crucial resources that are just too valuable to be spent doing “nothing”. Let’s look at the hustle culture where everyone is competing against each other for one-time jobs. And the only way we can prosper in this cut-throat economy is by always hustling and never stopping. When there’s no clear separation between work and leisure, doing “nothing” looks like a waste of time, because every second wasted means every second not earning. 

The always-working mentality is detrimental to our relationship, mental health, and physical health. That’s the reason why we have the 888 rule to rejuvenate ourselves to have more power for us to continue for the next day. It's the best rule to keep our work-life balance in check by dividing our 24 hours equally into work, leisure and rest. We should give ourselves the right to do nothing in particular at least one-third of the day. For now, we have to come to pause forcefully, we feel uncomfortable or even anxious because we are growing older with every single tick. But yet our goal and destination are getting further away. In this situation, we should also accept doing nothing. There’s no point feeling uncomfortable when there’s nothing to do. 

We are not missing out if there’s nothing much happening for us to miss out on. And one good practice that can enhance the art of doing nothing is doing nothing meditation. Our mind is always racing, bouncing from idea to idea. Doing nothing meditation is a practice that lets go of our sense of effort, the sense of trying, the sense of choosing and doing. 

The idea of “contentless awareness” means that being aware of our environments, but not concentrating on any specific “content” in our minds. We can think of it as the opposite of mindful meditation where the whole point is to focus and pay attention to our environments. What we want to achieve is truly do nothing, thinking about nothing and focusing on nothing, not even the thought of meditation. This requires great mental control. 

 

The steps for this meditation can be easy and simple, Sit comfortably and do nothing. Our monkey mind will still mess around with my thoughts. But remember this, it doesn’t matter what’s the distraction because our mind will still pull us in different directions, and that’s fine. We are not trying to meditate, focus, or concentrate in any way. So we can use the “let go” method. When you feel something, let it go. When you thought of something, let it go. When you focus on your breath, let it go. When you are thinking of letting go, let it go. 

Doing nothing has become a luxury we can never afford. But even after knowing that life is short, we try to squeeze everything into our lives as much as possible. We fear missing out and afraid that we’ll live an incomplete life. We might panic when times are bad and make the wrong decision that will threaten our long-term plan. Sometimes it’s alright to balance the chaos and “Make Time To Do Nothing”.