The value of doing nothing

Can we be more efficient and achieve better quality in what we do when we allow empty spaces in our life and work?

Not everything can constantly accelerate and increase. My inbox certainly can, and so does my capacity to work on it, or better, to make it go away. You can train the brain, it’s like a muscle, and it can increase its speed and capacity to process information. Making mistakes can increase too, while the consideration of details decreases, as they cannot be seen at the speed we rush through our days.

My father used to say, “whatever you do, do it as good as you can, otherwise don’t do it”. The child book author Astrid Lindgren said that after a long day of play, “there must be also a moment to just sit there”. My son says at dinner, after hours of homework, “I still need to work”. Times have changed.

It is remarkable what some people manage to pack in a day. We can discuss the quality of contributions, but the sheer quantity and compression of activities seems to have no limits. The US wins, according to OECD studies the US has the longest daily homework, the shortest holidays, the highest salaries, and so on.

One of the youngest prime ministers of the world, Sanna Marin in Finland was 34 when she proposed to introduce a flexible 6-hour, 4-day workweek. One of her spokesmen later on said that it would have been “more of a future vision and a potential future goal”.

I remember the Italian say “dare tempo al tempo” which means to allow time for things to succeed, or simply “give time time”. In German this would be “was lange währt, wird endlich gut”, meaning that if it takes long enough, it will be good in the end. I am not sure if this can be generalized, but I can see that in project work: the longer it takes to achieve something, the better the end result — if we always give our best, don’t give up on the quality of each one of our actions.

It is confusing that this end result might finally come together in a sudden, almost natural way, as if it would have been the most obvious thing to happen. Working enough and also struggling beforehand seems like paying a price before you get it. I suppose that we cannot accelerate that, it takes its time.

Maybe we need to give things a chance to happen almost automatically, after we did what we possibly could, and comprehend many factors that relate to a project, an activity, or decision we should make. If you read a letter that you wrote some time ago, you will realize what you could have explained better, where you made a mistake. You did not see this when reading it through right after writing. How many mistakes could we avoid and how much time could we safe if we would give more time to what we have to do? As we became so efficient, how can we decelerate?

I am fast, I like speed and I am not very patient. I also prefer pressure and challenges that make me give my best, to getting bored with something that is too easy or repetitive. However, many years ago I had a burnout. Too much responsibility for my age back then, too much work, not enough sleep and a lack of social interaction led to a very unpleasant experience. It felt like falling in a black hole, and it took a very long time to get out of there. If I would have slowed down beforehand, I would have saved a lot of time.

Since then, I started to do nothing, at times. Initially it was a bit like stopping smoking or chewing fingernails. It is very hard to do nothing, to give up on constantly doing something. I mean doing literally nothing — when you meditate, read a book, go for a walk, you still do something. Doing nothing instead is even more efficient to recharge the batteries, wake up your spirits, and reset your brain. Maybe I can afford only five minutes, sometimes I need a whole hour. It is extremely rewarding to do nothing for a whole day. Afterwards you will see challenges from a new perspective, have new ideas, find the courage to approach what seemed so hard to tackle.

I started to integrate this time in my planning. If I head to the airport, I calculate some 15 minutes, to have time to wait. When I go to the university, you can find me in Union Square, just sitting there for a few minutes before I enter my workplace. I started to value when I can’t do anything, for instance when things take longer than expected or when I cannot sleep. I also started to do nothing with others. It is absolutely fine to just be together, without saying or doing anything. At some point there will be a conversation or activity, it might be a better one. I try to cultivate silence in workshops and in zoom meetings, not enough though, it is not that easy.

Doing nothing is a privilege. We take away this privilege from who gets exploited at work. This exploitation has many facets, it is not only what is requested form us at the workplace itself. It is hard to consider doing nothing if the health insurance for a sick loved one depends on your job(s). We do not always have the support that only very few countries offer, so that people can concentrate on work, take breaks, risk and excel, and don’t get stressed out with the fear of social downturns, healthcare systems, childcare and pension funds.

With the pandemic many people lost their jobs and there is nothing positive about that. It is terrible if you want to work and can’t. Others could keep their jobs and worked from home, or they moved out of the city to a friend or family member in the countryside. Some had more time to reflect on their life from a different perspective and did not come back after the lockdown. The changes happening in the workforce are huge and might lead to the most significant social changes in our lifetime. Considering that despite all technology and efficiency in the developed economies there was not that much social progress over the past 20 years, maybe it will have a positive impact that we had to slow down for some time.

In any case, to take some time during the day, in a week, and in your life without any activity should not have a negative connotation. It should be something we strive for, it has value in every regard. With finishing these lines and before dinner with my family, I have a few minutes to do what I like doing most: nothing.