Why You Shouldn’t Underestimate the Power of Doing Nothing

Image Source: Generated by Copilot

The year is 2025. You wake up, immediately check your phone, rush to get to work, spend the day sitting at your desk typing away, scroll through your phone at lunch with your eyes glued to the screen, come home and unwind by watching Netflix while texting your friends, go to bed, and repeat it all over again the next day.

When was the last time you started the morning with a walk without your phone? Or went to a nearby deli for lunch to enjoy a meal by yourself, sitting at the table outside, staring at the clouds.

As pressure continues to pile up on all of us every day to stay connected with the world and stimulated by all the noise that comes with it, I would love to have just a few minutes of your time to explain to you why doing nothing can sometimes be the best reset for you.

Decoding the Message & Deciphering the Medium

We are regularly communicating with tons of people in several ways. Texting, phone calls, emails, social media direct messages and comments, Snapchat, to name a few. Johann Hari, author of “Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention – How to Think Deeply Again,” tries to make sense of this concept and provides a clear metaphor to understand how you can decode messages and decipher which mediums they’re coming from. “Every time a new medium comes along, whether it’s the invention of the printed book, TV, or Twitter, and you start to use it, it’s like you are putting on a new kind of goggles with their own special colors and lenses.” I believe Johann is right. Once you develop self-awareness and understanding of what someone is communicating to you and know why they chose to deliver it in that way, you will strengthen your relationships with others.  

Image Source: Remark

Haste Makes Waste: Mind Wander Instead

There’s an overarching fear amongst most people that boredom is a waste of time and useless. What if I told you that’s wrong and there are clear benefits you are missing out on? One easy way to think about this is to look at the animal kingdom. Naturebang, a radio show by BCC, partnered with psychologists and professors to explain why we should be doing a whole lot more… nothing.  “The natural world seems like a busy place. But the truth is that most animals spend most of their time doing nothing. We’ve created a society where we fear boredom and we’re afraid of doing nothing. But in trying to avoid boredom, we miss out on its benefits. When we’re bored, we daydream, and that has been linked to creativity.”



Whether you are an ant watching others in your colony forage, or you’re a 20-year-old in college studying for your physics final, something all forms of life have in common is the inability to create time. None of us should fear this; instead, we should embrace it by doing nothing and taking a step back to understand the different messages we receive, the mediums they go through, and let our minds wander.

Image Source: BBC

I’m excited to learn more about the data associations and specific techniques I can use to think deeply and regain my attention.