The Art of Doing Nothing

According to multiple studies, taking breaks increases our output in the long term. Is this right, or just another myth in this world of the internet. Well, I am here, a person from the internet, to tell you whether this is correct (if you still didn’t get the joke, even with the bold words, FIND SOME HELP!!) or not. To tell you the honest truth I needed a very reliable study…so I did the study.

If someone asks you about something and you want to be reliable, try it on yourself. And if they ask how death is…….well then just break friendship with them, because they are evil.

Mybookgest

I already am a big fan of taking breaks while working, (20-minute work 30-minute break) I use something called a pomodora timer, and if you want to know what it is read my article here. But in this article, I am not talking about taking breaks between work, I am talking about taking breaks during normal days, and not just weekdays but also weekends. So, let’s get started.

I started this study on 1^st July, and I am writing this on 5^th of July. Also, if some of you geniuses (yep, I am looking at you) think that for these 5 days I just did…nothing. Well, you can’t be more wrong, you see, doing nothing, for a teenager is just not possible. I have 100s of things on my to-do list plus my online school has started, I am still doing the courses which I had started during the whole lockdown thing. So, what am I doing if I am not doing nothing? (that’s weird to say) The Art of Doing Nothing is not doing nothing for the whole day, it is doing nothing for some time each day. When you thought of it as not doing anything for the whole day, you were close, but still you get 0 marks.

Now, why do this…thing. Well, simply because it has many advantages. Which advantages you ask? Well, for starters it helps you cope with the stress of the whole day, it also makes you recollect and analyze all the things you did and decisions you made in the whole day. For me, as a student it helped me recollect whatever I was taught the whole day and also saved me a revision session. (which I later utilized by doing…some more nothing)

I am sure many people will confuse this with meditation. Those people would be wrong, very wrong. Let me explain…in meditation you need to think of nothing or sometimes you need to focus on your breath or even properly listen to the sounds in your surroundings and just observe them. But for a hyperactive person like me or any student for that matter, thinking of nothing, focusing on the breath and even listening to the sounds around is impractical, impossible, a waste of time and also booooring. Why you ask? Ask yourself, someone who can’t sit on a bench for 10 minutes without moving, who has so much work to do, that they can’t even remember what work they need to do (which is why they don’t do the work) can these people meditate? No. It’s too hard. Which is why they need to practice this.

How to do this nothing? Well, it’s pretty easy. All you need to do is sit, close your eyes and think. You don’t need to sit cross-legged, nor do you need to keep your hands in a particular position, all you need to do is sit in whichever way you are comfortable. Next, you need to leave everything and just think about one thing, this one thing can be anything from what you are going to do tomorrow or even about a movie you saw. I would highly recommend you to think about what you did the whole day and analyze your decisions. I do this and it helps me to know what I did right and what I did wrong. Do not confuse it with introspection, it’s simpler. As kids in this high-speed world, we face choices and decisions everyday, I will give you an example- someone calls you fat, the next day when you wake up, you think of something that you could have said to that person. By analyzing your actions and knowing what you did wrong, you will develop something called a presence of mind.

Now, before you start flooding the comments with “But that’s not doing nothing”, “Thinking is also doing something”. Let me tell you something, thinking of NOTHING is very hard and requires years of practice and also is called meditation. But I can tell you from the most reliable study ever, that it worked for me!

That was it everybody, ‘The Art of Doing Nothing’ is a very easy process, and I love it. Hope you find it useful. Subscribe to Bookgest to get more awesome content by going to the bottom of the page, rate this article, comment down below if you want me to do something specific. Next time I will write a book review, and I still need to decide which book. But I don’t worry because I can complete a 200 page book in 2 to 3 hours (not bragging…..or am I??) so I don’t need much time. But be sure to stay tuned for more awesome content. I will see you, in the next one. Peace!