I’m always a bit confused when people say the term “doing nothing”. It is literally impossible to be doing nothing — if you’re watching TV or movies, you’re watching TV or movies. If you’re sitting around surfing on the internet, that’s what you’re doing. If you’re staring into space or thinking, you are doing an activity. There’s no activity called “nothing” — that literally does not make any sense.
“Doing nothing” is society’s way of placing importance and value on what you’re actually doing when you’re “doing nothing”, and when most people use that phrase, I believe it’s a replacement for “resting”, which is not doing nothing. It just means not actively doing “something”, where “something” is an activity that you’re willing to tell people about and perhaps not “looked down” upon society.
You’re resting, letting your mind and body recover, sleep, and whatever else. These are all not “doing nothing”. Therein lies the crux of the statement, perhaps a problem with this idea of “doing nothing”: society doesn’t place value in resting, in taking a break, in letting the mind wander, in sleeping. Sometimes, you do just need a day to sit around and binge those TV shows, to read a book while listening to the rain outside, to lie in bed and stare at the ceiling. Time doesn’t stop but you can slow down and take a break. Resting and similar activities ensure you have a better day, a clearer brain, and more energy in the activities you want to do.
I was very much a go-go-go type of person in the past, and this encompassed my entire life: work, hobbies, meeting people, travel, everything. At some point (perhaps with age and less energy), I realized this isn’t sustainable, and overworking in any area of life will seep into other parts of life, taking away the physical and mental energy from those areas. Resting makes life sustainable, makes me able to continue on with the activities I want to fill my life with, regardless of whether the activity is talking to friends, going for a long hike, or doing work.
I’m in lot of travel groups and see people all the time with very compact schedules, and I know those people will likely not enjoy their travel as much as they would because there’s this pressure to always be doing “something”. Resting is not part of the schedule, but I bet including rest days or rest times in each day will make the rest of the trip much more enjoyable.
The mindset needs to shift — the idea of continuously going, running towards what? Life is finite, and there will be forever a list of activities to do. The trick isn’t to try to do it all, the trick is to prioritize and use time wisely for the items we prioritize the most, and using time wisely might be to rest. To sleep, to calm ourselves physically, mentally, and emotionally, to re-energize for the next priority.
