“Doing Nothing” by Jason Kotecki. 20 x 20. Oil on canvas.
Original is available. 🔴 Shop this art!
Doing nothing isn’t really doing nothing.
New parents (and parents-to-be) get lots of advice. Among the wellspring of wisdom are tips on getting your kids to eat or sleep, and keeping them alive while maintaining your sanity.
Perhaps the truest and most common exhortation is: Cherish every moment; it all goes so fast.
We don’t need anyone to tell us this, of course. It’s so obvious that we discard it out of hand with a smile, a nod, and a quip like, “I know; the days are long, but the years are short, amiright?”
The problem is that the entire world seems to conspire against us.
It doesn’t want us cherishing anything. That would require us to slow down for a hot minute. Cherishing, pondering, reflecting…these don’t feel very productive. In fact, they feel a lot like doing nothing.
I remember when my oldest daughter was a newborn. One afternoon, after completing the important work-related items on my to-do list, I relieved Kim by assuming caregiving duties. Lucy and I nestled into the rocking chair, where she promptly downed several ounces and drifted off to sleep. I sat for a few moments, soaking in the silence before the siren song of productivity resurfaced. Now that she had fallen asleep so quickly, I could tackle my email! As I was about to set her on the couch and grab my laptop, it hit me:
Oh my gosh. I’m doing it. I’m missing out on the best stuff.
Sometimes, a sleeping baby is a gift God gives us to help us manage other responsibilities. But I’d already accomplished my important tasks for the day. In that moment, I received a gift: the realization that there will always be e-mail to check, but my opportunities to hold that little sleeping angel were numbered. I became acutely aware that years from now, when I’m walking Lucy down the aisle on her wedding day, I will not remember any of the “productive” things I did that day. But the memory of her button nose, bald head, and peaceful slumber will remain with me forever.
On that rapidly approaching day, I don’t want to find myself wishing I’d spent more time doing “nothing.”
We live in a culture that worships at the altar of productivity. Adultitis is a sinister foe after all of us. It has tricked us into believing that we should always be busy, always “doing” something. If it’s not shared on social media, it didn’t happen. If it can’t be measured, it doesn’t matter.
A book called How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clayton Christensen sheds light on this. He points out that it is our nature to unconsciously choose the things that give us an immediate, tangible accomplishment over something for which we aren’t likely to see a return for decades.
We can cut the grass, close a sale, finish a week’s worth of lesson plans, deliver a presentation, publish a paper, or redesign our website in less time than it takes to raise great kids or build an awesome marriage.
So we default to efforts that provide an immediate payoff and a satisfying feeling of accomplishment.
In chasing this dopamine hit of achievement — even one that isn’t all that consequential — we confuse the urgent with the important. We unwittingly turn irrelevant tasks into priorities simply because they can be checked off some list. And checking off five things is better than one, even if the undone item was the most important.
Like a junkie craving another high, we feel anxious spending too much time doing nothing.
But doing nothing isn’t really doing nothing. Sure, holding my sleeping baby and soaking in a quiet moment didn’t decrease the messages in my inbox. But it certainly wasn’t “nothing.” Quite the contrary.
Taking the time to do nothing once in a while – especially with the people we love – might be the single most important thing we do all day.
When you carve out time to be with someone you care about, “What are we going to do?” becomes a question that demands an answer. The longer it goes without one, the higher the anxiety levels rise.
Unfortunately, without a specific activity on which to focus our attention, we turn to those little dopamine-delivering slot machines always by our side. Time and again, I see friends or couples together, at the beach, on the train, out to dinner, and their attention is on their phones.
Their bodies are near each other, but their hearts and minds are miles apart.
Together, but not really.
All because we can’t escape the lure to do…something.
Let’s refuse to let the almighty algorithm dictate how we spend our time. What if the answer to “What are we going to do?” was simply, “Nothing. Doesn’t matter. Let’s just be together.” There doesn’t need to be a mission accomplished, a box to be checked, or an objective to be measured.
This painting is inspired by a favorite quote from Winnie the Pooh, who said, “People say nothing is impossible, but I do nothing every day.”
Doing nothing, it seems, takes more effort than doing something.
When Lucy was a baby, and I was savoring a quiet moment alone with her doing nothing, the pull of productivity tried to poison it. Even if I left my laptop closed, I wondered if I should be engaging her more, teaching her more, or coming up with something more “Instagram worthy” to do with her. Was I a bad dad for not wanting to do more than just sit with her?
But the doing nothing was actually…nice.
And it filled me with peace that is oh so hard to come by these days.
Having a little honey, wishing on a dandelion, and enjoying a fine day together might feel a lot like nothing.
