When Did We Get So Bad at Doing Nothing?
I was thinking recently about how difficult it has become to do absolutely nothing.
And I mean nothing.
Not watching television. Not listening to a podcast. Not scrolling through your phone while supposedly watching television. Not answering emails. Not mentally writing tomorrow's to-do list.
Just sitting.
Doing nothing.
Even writing that feels slightly uncomfortable.
Because somewhere along the way, doing nothing seems to have become something we're not very good at.
We don't really wait anymore
Think about the little gaps that used to exist in everyday life.
Waiting for a bus.
Standing in a queue.
Sitting in the car waiting for somebody.
Waiting for the kettle to boil.
Even sitting on the toilet, if we're being completely honest.
There was once nothing particularly remarkable about having a few minutes when there simply wasn't anything to do.
Now there's a good chance that within seconds, our hand reaches for our phone.
And I'm certainly not going to pretend I'm above it.
I do it too.
There's always something available to fill the space. A message. An email. Facebook. Instagram. The news. A video we didn't particularly want to watch but somehow find ourselves watching anyway.
We've become incredibly good at making sure there's rarely a moment when absolutely nothing is happening.
And I wonder what that does to us.
Even relaxing has become productive
There's something else I've noticed.
We seem to have become rather good at turning relaxation into another job.
Go for 10,000 steps.
Complete your mindfulness.
Read something worthwhile.
Exercise.
Improve your sleep.
Drink enough water.
Make sure you're practising self-care.
All perfectly sensible things.
But sometimes I wonder whether we've managed to turn looking after ourselves into another list of things we're supposed to be getting right.
You can apparently even fail at relaxing now.
Maybe that's why sitting down and doing absolutely nothing can feel strangely indulgent.
There's a little voice somewhere saying:
Shouldn't you be doing something?
There's washing upstairs.
That email needs answering.
You could tidy the kitchen.
You haven't exercised today.
And suddenly you've got up again.
Perhaps we're uncomfortable with the quiet
There's another possibility.
Maybe being busy isn't always about how much we have to do.
Sometimes being busy means we don't have to notice what's happening inside us.
When our attention is constantly occupied, there's very little room for anything else to appear.
Then everything finally goes quiet.
And perhaps that's when we notice we're worried.
Or lonely.
Or unhappy with something.
Maybe there's a conversation we've been avoiding.
Perhaps we're exhausted.
Or maybe we don't know what we're feeling at all.
There's just a vague sense that something isn't quite right.
That doesn't mean everybody who scrolls through their phone is avoiding some deep emotional problem.
Sometimes we're just watching somebody fall over on TikTok.
But I do think it's interesting to notice how quickly many of us reach for distraction when nothing else is happening.
Boredom used to be allowed
I remember being bored as a child.
Properly bored.
There wasn't an endless supply of entertainment in your pocket.
Sometimes there genuinely was nothing to do.
And eventually something happened.
You found something.
You imagined something.
You went outside.
You annoyed somebody else who was equally bored.
Or sometimes you simply remained bored for a while.
I'm not suggesting we throw away our phones and recreate the 1980s.
But perhaps boredom wasn't entirely useless.
It created space.
And we don't seem to have very much of that anymore.
What happens if we leave the gap alone?
Maybe we don't need to make dramatic changes.
Perhaps we could simply notice the little gaps again.
Drink a cup of tea without doing something else at the same time.
Sit in the garden for ten minutes.
Leave the phone in your pocket while you're waiting for somebody.
Look out of the window on a train.
Walk somewhere occasionally without filling your ears.
And see what happens.
You might feel peaceful.
You might feel restless.
You might become bored.
You might suddenly remember something you've been meaning to do.
Or a thought might appear that you've been too busy to hear.
None of those reactions is wrong.
The interesting part is simply noticing them.
Maybe doing nothing isn't actually nothing
As a counsellor, I spend quite a lot of time sitting with people.
There isn't always an immediate answer.
Sometimes there isn't even an immediate question.
There can be silence.
And I've learnt not to be frightened of that.
Because quite often, if we don't rush to fill the silence, something eventually arrives.
A thought.
A feeling.
A realisation.
Sometimes something somebody has probably known for a long time but has never had enough quiet around it to put into words.
Perhaps that's true outside the counselling room too.
We spend so much of our lives absorbing information, responding to people, completing tasks and moving on to whatever comes next.
Maybe occasionally our minds need a little space in which nothing is required of us at all.
Not because it's productive.
Not because it's good for our mental health.
Not because we're practising mindfulness correctly.
And definitely not because it's another thing to tick off the list.
Just because we're allowed to stop sometimes.
So here's my thought for today.
When was the last time you did absolutely nothing — and didn't feel guilty about it?
I can't remember either.
Perhaps that's the point.
Kieran
Trust Counselling
Talk • Reflect • Move Forward
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