What are you doing right now? Probably mindlessly scrolling on instagram, tapping through story after story, barely acknowledging one before you move on to the next. (If you made it to this post, thanks for stopping by). Maybe you’re killing time on the bus journey home, or sitting on the sofa working up the energy to cook yourself some dinner.
Whatever it is I’m almost certain you don’t remember thinking “let me check instagram now”.
I’m almost certain it was an automatic response to ‘having nothing else to do’.
I’m almost certain your idle hands were itching for something to hold because for some reason doing nothing is far too unsettling.
Why is that?
Today’s world is far too loud. That’s the short answer at least; we are constantly surrounded by a hundred different stimuli, each one pursuing a different response. Honestly, I’d be worried if you didn’t feel overwhelmed by it all. We’ve been conditioned to crave the constant stimulation, the background noise, the endless need for motion. But we fail to realise just how much we need true rest – and how much we’re actively robbing ourselves of it. To be busy has become a badge, and distraction a drug.
So, I have a proposition for you: let’s stop shaming each other for “doing fuck all” and start seeing it for what it truly is. It’s not laziness, but a refusal to auction off every spare moment of our precious time. It’s an intentional act to let time breathe. It takes practice, patience and is not an easy thing, but doing a little more “nothing” is a great way to rebel in a world that has taught us to be forever consumed and never still.
I am a firm believer that a day of doing fuck all should be a purposeful part of everyone’s schedule, purely to have a break from the rest of your life. How many times have you let moments pass you by because you’re “too busy” to stop and acknowledge it? This, I think is another matter entirely. However, it has a lot to do with the art of doing fuck all because the more you give yourself space to simply be, the more capacity you have to feel everything else.
Doing nothing doesn’t have to be intimidating, in fact it shouldn’t be. It should be freeing. When you notice the sunlight crawling across the walls of your house, acknowledge it. When you step into the woods where the air feels cleaner, feel the weight of your breath in your chest. When raindrops on the car window catch your eye, follow them as they fall. Life starts to feel more manageable when you aren’t rushing through it all the time.
Remember when you were a kid, sitting in the backseat of your parents car. Your Nintendo DS ran out of charge and your sibling is asleep so you can’t annoy them. What would you do instead? I personally would pick something to count, like birds nests in the trees. Or I’d imagine a little man running along with the car doing parkour over any obstacles – bushes, trees, trucks and houses. Sounds silly I know, but this is what your mind is capable of creating when you sit with boredom long enough for it to blossom.
That’s why doing fuck all is an art.
Lili Reinhart once said this:
“If I started out as this celestial being, just energy, and the universe or God or whomever said, “Hey, do you want to go to Earth for an incredibly short amount of time, like a blip, and experience every emotion that you can possibly feel as a human. You get to have all these experiences, love, heartache, anxiety, joy, euphoria, whatever. All of it. Do you want to do that?
Yes, I do.
So, when I’m feeling these intense feelings, it’s sort of a reality check to step outside and say, although this is a very uncomfortable, painful feeling, its quite beautiful that I have the capacity to experience it.”
When you stop distracting yourself with this, that, or the other, feelings will come up. Stillness joins the table and brings with it uninvited guests – discomfort, loneliness, grief – whatever is there, learning to sit with them may be the greatest thing you will ever teach yourself. Doing nothing means letting them be there and be heard.
I read about an experiment performed in 2014, in which 42 participants were each left in an empty room for 15 minutes with nothing but their thoughts, and a button that would administer an electric shock if pushed. A significant number of participants chose to press the button for at least one self-inflicted shock, with one man shocking himself 190 times in the 15 minute period! These results show that generally these people would rather do something, even if that something is unpleasant, than nothing at all. The experience of being alone with your thoughts is something we avoid even if it costs us.
I’m just as guilty of this myself – I pick my fingers, bounce my leg up and down, rarely sit still for more than a few minutes. I’d say I’m ok being alone with my thoughts, though still not without my hands doing something.
Doing nothing isn’t an absence; its presence. Start choosing to have idle hands and you might start getting a little more out of life. Maybe the real richness is not found in what we add, but in what we find in the moments between. Mastering the art of doing fuck all will leave you more space to breathe, more time to think, more capacity to feel and should remind you that sometimes simply existing is enough. Sometimes the most alive you’ll ever feel is when you’re doing absolutely nothing at all.
~ Teya
