How to do nothing...

Doing nothing is something I struggle with... Actually to break it down I struggle doing nothing at home, in my house & I struggle doing nothing when people I know are around. For example, earlier this year when I was studying full-time at home, alone, I'd await the weekend to go out and do things. Jorge, however, felt completely the opposite... After finishing a working week of between 38-50 hours all he wanted to do on his weekend was sit at home and do nothing. 

I am happy however to go somewhere like the beach, park, or forest and do nothing there... 

Kinfolk have published an insightful article on The Idler: How to do nothing, written by Nikaela Marie Peters, which I thought I'd share some bits of...

"As people get older, they realise that time is more valuable than money. And finding more time to do absolutely nothing is perhaps exactly what we all need... 

It's the stuff of gods and infants -- the birthplace of great works of art, philosophy and science. The habit of doing nothing at all is super-important to our individual and cultural well-being, yet it seems to be dying in our digitized age... 

Far from laziness, proper idleness is the soul's home base. Before we plan or love or decide or act or storytell, we are idle. Before we learn, we watch. Before we do, we dream. Before we play, we imagine. The idle mind is awake but unconstrained, free to slip untethered from idea to idea or meander from potential theory to potential truth. Thomas Aquinas argued that "it is necessary for the perfection of human society that ther should be men who devote their lives to contemplation... 

Is true idleness a lost skill? How often do we sit, serenely unoccupied? How often do we walk, as henry David Thoreau advised, with no agenda or destination, present and free? What an uncommon sight: a solitary individual, his head not buried in a newspaper or laptop or phone, simply sitting -- his mind long wandered off... 

Productivity is not the only measure of time well spent. Some of the most important scientific innovations and inventions were 'happened upon,' unplanned, after years of unproductive, leisurely puzzling... 

I'm convinced that time spent idle makes for a healthier state of mind. We want less and are more at peace when we get it. We sleep better and work harder. Simpler things bring us joy. When we daily observe our immediate surroundings, we are more grounded in our context, more attuned to the rhythms of whatever season or place we are in..."