Doing Nothing is Better Than Doing a Bad Thing

Too many people don’t understand that doing nothing is better than doing something that is bad. The hustle culture is alive and well and it shames us into thinking that we constantly have to do something. I’m all for productivity but I’m not for excessive productivity at the expense of our health.

Think about the last time that you actually relaxed on a weekend. Did you feel bad or anxious that you’re not producing things of value? When’s the last time you literally did nothing? Not even during the weekends, what about during work? You deserve breaks here and there and you don’t have to constantly create value.

By overworking yourself into the ground by actually doing something, you are literally worsening your life. The best course of action for you could literally be to do nothing. Doing nothing is better than doing a bad thing. Doing no deal is better than a bad deal. Having no relationship is better than a bad relationship.

There are many others who shame us when we’re not working hard because it’s in their best interest for you to work hard. There are many others who praise you when you’re working hard because it’s in their best interest for you to work hard. Figure out the difference between them caring about you than the alternative.

If you feel the company is properly compensating you and the compensation is worth it, then by all means. Go ahead. I’m not trying to prevent your life from getting better. What I do want to prevent is for your life to get worse. Overwork caused so many heart attacks, high blood pressures, and many health issues.

It wouldn’t be a post about overworking without first talking about… “The Hustle Culture”.

The Hustle Culture

We can’t talk about doing nothing without mentioning its enemy called the “Hustle Culture”. The hustle culture is a cleverly marketing ploy and not an actual mainstream word. Hustle culture is a neologism for the word “Workaholic“. Of course, employees will not work hard when companies call them workaholics so they call us “hustlers”.

It’s insanely toxic. There are people who place their work meeting over the birth of their children. Or the funeral of a grandparent. If you work in investment banking, and the company fires you, you start to bring up all the sacrifices that you made for the company. You might say, “but I missed my mother-in-law’s funeral to work a deal”.

Then your boss will immediately counter with “I missed my own mother’s funeral to work a deal, goodbye”. Is that really the culture that you want to live in? If you want to do it for 2-3 years, pad up your savings, and move on to the next big thing, by all means.

The culture forces you to constantly feel like you’re busy or productive, otherwise you feel bad that you’re not doing anything meaningful. While working is phenomenal by giving us a sense of purpose, there’s declining benefit. You fight the hustle culture through its greatest enemy: doing nothing.

Sometimes, you just want to kick it back, relax, and be alone with your thoughts. Notice the world around you by going to the park. Physically and mentally disconnect from work. It’s the antidote to the poison that is working yourself to death. Never forget the power of 0. Zero is still better than negative.

That’s what doing nothing gets you.

Dangers of Always Doing Something

One of the dangers of always doing something is that you don’t have the mental capacity to SMASH that social share button and post to your favorite social media! I spend a lot of time trying to come up with good articles that adds value to you so if you could share this article with your friends for me, I would greatly appreciate it.

So with that said, let’s get into what happens if you always do something instead of doing nothing from time to time.

1) Feelings of Inadequacy

The number one effect of always doing something is that you feed your insecurity of feeling inadequate. Whether we like it or not, jobs give us purpose in life. It gives us something to do and a reason for our existence. However, when we have the constant need to do something, we feel inadequate even if we’re doing a lot already.

We start to feel like we should do more. In this stage, forget about doing nothing. We’re well past that. Now it’s about how to work until you literally have to end up in the hospital. It’s even worse when we log onto social media and see all our friends accomplishing meaningful things with their lives.

Then it motivates you to do even more things and put in more hours that you didn’t need to in the first place. When you constantly feel like you need to achieve, you feel inadequate. The antidote would be to do nothing and be completely be OK with doing nothing and mentally and physically relax.

For some people, it’s much harder than it sounds.

2) Search to Do Anything That Feels Productive

With the constant need to feel like you are productive and doing something, you consistently search to do anything that feels productive. It doesn’t matter if that anything was literally a time waster. You’ll start going to the grocery store more often to pick up that one item that you thought you needed.

However, when it turns out that you didn’t need that product until the next month, then you just wasted the time that it takes to get to the grocery store. Additionally, now you have extra stuff that you have to tend to and organize before moving on with your life.

You start seeking out more activities to do instead of more quality activities to do.

The saying is that when you try to please everybody, you end up pleasing nobody. Likewise, when you try to do everything, you end up doing nothing meaningful. Instead, targeted and focused tasks are much more important to accomplish. The constant need to achieve will lead you to actually doing nothing meaningful.

3) Paranoia

When you feel like you have to always be doing something, you can’t relax easily when you’re doing nothing. Doing nothing feels wrong. Even in the literal context, doing nothing is a neutral act. It’s neither good nor bad. It just is. However, in the hustle culture, that’s not how you feel. Your emotions work against you.

You have a hard time relaxing and think that you must be doing something wrong if you’re not doing anything. That feeling when you have nothing to do but know that in the back of your mind, you know you have to do something? Yeah we all felt it before. It happens during work, on our weekends, and when we least expect it.

This is the withdrawal symptoms of not constantly doing something. It’s not a good feeling. You end up searching for things to do and become disappointed when you find out you can’t recall what things you need to finish. Then you become even more worried, So on and so on.

This is a dangerous side effect. You should never feel guilty about doing nothing.

Why Doing Nothing is the Antidote

So then now that you know that always doing something is very detrimental to your health, we move on to why doing nothing is so great. It’s the actual antidote to the overwork, hustle, and workaholic culture that’s pervasive today. The best part is that it costs nothing.

1) Doing Nothing Relaxes Your Mind

When you do nothing, there’s no stress. You’re sitting on your couch, staring at the ceiling. No one needs or wants anything from you and you don’t want or need anything from others. Your safety and physiological needs are taken care of and you can finally reach nirvana. Nothing raises your blood pressure in this state.

Your cortisol levels are in check, you don’t feel any nervousness, unlike when you have to prepare to publicly speak. There’s no work presentation you have to walk anybody through and you can just relax and think about things you want to think about.

Work controls our mind more than we think. We have to think about what we have to finish tomorrow. We have to think about what good things we did today and how to improve on the bad things. You need more relaxing in your mind because a mental break is not something we give ourselves.

2) Doing Nothing Makes You Human

Even MACHINES break down from overuse if we don’t give it rest. Machines overheat from overuse which leads to them breaking down more easily. We are not as built as machines that can function at will just on commodities such as electricity. We need food, water, and best of all, sleep to keep us alive and moving forward.

Doing nothing is what separates the machines and the robots from us. It’s what makes us human. We need to take a step back in order to spring forward two more steps. This is the art of not doing anything. If you just want to sit back and lay down on the bed while watching time pass by, by all means. Do it!

When I have bad sleep days, I love laying down on my bed and staring at the ceiling. It gives me alone time and time to think about things that I want to think about. No obligations to other people and no need for other people’s approval. Don’t fight something that literally makes you a human being.

3) Decreased Cortisol Levels

Cortisol is your body’s main stress hormone. It’s what can help regulate your internal body’s clock. When your cortisol levels are too high, it can cause anxiety and headaches, to name just a few symptoms. When you do nothing, you reduce your cortisol levels, if you can truly mentally disconnect from work.

Don’t think about that friend you need to reach out back to. Don’t think about the social media that you forgot to catch up on. Just simply exist and enjoy yourself for who you are as a person when you’re doing nothing. Your body regulate your cortisol levels back to normal. Your blood pressure normalizes as a result as well.

This is one of the most dangerous hormones to not be in balance because you don’t notice it affecting you. At a certain stage. adrenaline rush kicks in and we don’t even realize our internal systems are misaligned. That’s dangerous to know that your body ignores something that’s literally making it worse.

Doing nothing helps regulate your cortisol levels back to normal. Decreased cortisol levels mean you can avoid burnout.

4) Back to Normality

Speaking of normal, doing nothing helps you get back to the default position. When you’re born, you did not have the constant need and desire to create and make things happen. All you wanted to do was to live to fight another day. You just wanted to stay alive and exist through to the next day.

That’s our default position. Somewhere along the way, authority figures sent us to school and education so that we can learn to provide value for others. That’s a change from normality and the default position. Some people don’t go back to normality until their 60’s, when they retire. That shouldn’t be life.

Whether we like it or not, it’s irregular and abnormal to be in a state of productivity. It’s a change from when we weren’t judged based on our ability to produce. Therefore, you return to the “simpler part” of life, as they say. The simpler part of life is better than the industrial and complex part of our life that most of us have to go through.

5) Be Present

Doing nothing allows you to be present. You’re not looking at the next things you have to accomplish, you’re looking at the now. You’re enjoying other people’s company or just your own company. There’s no need to think about the next 10 moves, all you have to think about is the very next move you have to do.

Culturally, we live in a “forward thinking” society where the future is valued more highly than the present. That’s OK. However, at some point, we have to care more about what’s happening now than what’s happening later. Don’t look at your smart phone. Actually look up and enjoy the nature, the wind, and the sun.

Don’t live in an artificial, manmade world. Live in a world created by nature. Smell the air and feel the wind blowing up against your face. They make a huge difference to your mood whether you realize it or not. Bonus points if you actually do realize the difference in your mood afterwards.

Doing Nothing is the Best Thing Ever

During weekends, I specifically leave out at least three hours per day to do nothing. Do nothing but sit at my couch and let my thoughts just come and go. Whatever my mind wants to think about, I just let it do its thing and not interrupt. Some of my best ideas are born from this technique.

When I have work during the week, I don’t have the time to think in big picture terms. Doing nothing lets you think in big picture terms instead of focusing on minute details on a day to day basis. You don’t have to think about the small things like brushing your teeth or turning on the AC.

You can just think about how you’re going to take your career to the next step. What’s your plan of action? How are you going to be a better person for your significant other? Did you have time to take care of the health problem you said that you would look at? I personally have a digestive and neck problem.

I get indigestion very easily and my neck has been hurting for the past decade. On the weekends is when I can tend to them and focus my attention. I currently massage and heat up my shoulders, neck, and chest to solve this long term health problem.

We have no time or the ability to think about them on weekdays because of other priorities. We have to focus on fulfilling our short term needs rather than long term goals. Whatever your long term goals are, doing nothing is when you can think about them. Don’t forever get stuck in the “I’ll do it later” mentality.