Why and how to Do Nothing
It is in our nature to feel discontented. There's never enough [fill in the blank]. This natural state is exacerbated in America, where the system would implode if people were allowed to feel contented enough to stop buying things.
I've done a lot, and in so doing have found that no amount of doing ever actually changes this feeling. In fact, so far as I can see the only way off this hamster wheel (rat race?) is to do the opposite. To Do Nothing.
But since everything around us reinforces this notion that we must DO SOMETHING to feel ok, "doing nothing" ends up being a surprisingly active way to live. It can be done while gainfully employed and even while running a business.
Below you will find a running list of ways I and others have found to "do nothing" effectively, some of which are obvious but many of which are counterintuitive.
Wake up early. Nearly everyone I talk to says "I really should wake up earlier" at some point. There's science that says people who wake up earlier are happier than people who stay up late, but people still resist it (I almost didn't graduate WMU because I couldn't make it to an 11am gym class in time). About 3 years ago I started waking up between 4 and 5 am, and now that window has become one of the most peaceful parts of my day. After a couple hours of reading and meditation, the rest of my day feels much more spacious.
Check a box first thing in the morning. At first this seems to not belong here, but I promise it's legit. The primary driver of our discontented-achieving is a feeling that we're perpetually behind, and I've found that starting my day with a win, no matter how small, builds a feeling of momentum that changes the background of the rest of my day. I don't think I'll ever catch up with the world, but I figure there's a reason that the US military has everyone make their beds every day.
Meditate. What used to be a spiritual exercise has been secularized for the masses through the benign term "mindfulness" (which is good, because I probably would still think it too "woowoo" had it not been destigmatized). Mindfulness is the art of being deeply present with and in the moment, and it is a muscle that can be trained. A root cause of many feelings of insecurity & inadequacy stem from the feeling that we're somehow not OK (not strong enough, smart enough, funny enough, or just enough). Like many, for a long time I tried to overcompensate for these feelings and ended up in a perpetual race away from my fears. Way more than simply "getting more calm," meditation allows us to understand our fears at the root, and maybe even let go of them.
Look deeply at nature. Amidst all the achieving and the hustle and bustle, it can be really easy to forget the amazing fact that you are alive, and that anything you are worried about is so immensely unimportant in the face of your aliveness. We pass trees, grass and clouds every day but don't bother to look, so engrossed are we in our mental machinery. Looking deeply at a tree, the sky or a mountain has the remarkable ability to remind me how insignificant my problems are.
Delete your social apps. Social media is one of the primary vehicles through which we stress out. I've documented why I left the social media world for a while as well, although I've returned. I started by only checking the websites, but soon reinstalled the apps (it's convenient). Holy shit, the difference. The moment the apps were installed on my phone, what had previously been a fun website to check once a day for a few minutes became a near-constant itch. It took me about 3 hours to delete them again. Most people are used to the social tether by now, but I promise you that giving yourself a break is profound. If you can, try getting off social entirely. If you can't, delete the apps and make it just a little harder to check in, and you'll thank me later.
Turn off all notifications. I used to think I needed all those little red, numbered bubbles to tell me that I had an email. But then I took a sabbatical during which I turned off all notifications, and then simply didn't turn them back on when I came back to work. I haven't missed an email, even though my screen has no red dots on it. Turns out, you don't need the blood on your screen to remind you to check it. Bonus: Turning notifications off has gotten rid of my chronic "phantom vibration syndrome" as well.
Don't check your phone when you have a minute. You know the situation, your meeting is running 5 minutes late, and you figure you'll just check your phone to kill the time. Just don't. A period of 5 unallocated minutes spent simply observing yourself and your surroundings can be as grounding as a trip to the spa. Sometimes I don't catch myself in time, but when I have a window like this, mostly I remember to simply take a breath and look around.
Do something nice for someone, anonymously. If you watch your mental machinery, you'll see that, almost invariably, it's focused on you. You really are the center of your own Universe, and maintaining that fact can be exhausting. I've found that while I'm not always happy thinking about someone else, when I'm unhappy I am almost always thinking of myself. When I find myself in this trap, an easy hack is to intentionally do something nice for someone and not tell them (if you tell them it becomes about you). My favorite is to pay for the person's meal behind me in the drive thru.
Read something spiritual. Tao Te Ching, Koran, Bible, Dhammapada, Bhagavad Gita, whatever. All these texts have been focus-grouped by humanity for thousands of years, so they clearly say something important. Although it's hard to see from inside, contemporary American culture is quite unique from a historical perspective (Babylon maybe?), and reading spiritual texts provides a kind of doorway into a more fundamental and timeless truth about what it is to be human. Connecting with some version of that truth regularly can have a profound impact on your life. Doesn't matter what spirituality, do what works for you.
Act expressively, rather than functionally. Most of life is a series of actions designed to get you somewhere. The inherent flaw in that logic is its implication that where you are currently is somehow not enough. The more you can think of your actions as expressive, that is an expression of who you are combined with the specific moment in which you find yourself, the more you can let go of the outcomes and your anxiety, and simply find space. I've tried to control outcomes most of my life, and the times I'm happiest are when I let go. Love Parker Palmer's "The Active Life" as an analysis of this.
Journal. Someone smart said, "I don't know what I think until I say it." Someone else smart said, "the mind is no place for serious thinking." When my mind is going a million miles an hour spinning around the same issue over and over, writing it down helps me clarify my thoughts and give my monkey mind a break. On paper, it's much easier to look at a thought from all sides, really challenge the thought and stress test it, and eventually to relate to it as decided, and move on.
I plan to update this post periodically, so please let me know your favorites, and add your own tips, hacks and best practices in the comments to help us all reclaim a bit of the space and time that we've lost on our way to success.