I just came back from a week and a half of vacation in Europe. Like many who traveled this summer, it was the first real, trans-continental vacation I have taken in a long, long time. I celebrated this time off by doing Pretty Much Nothing the entire time and now that I’m back, it still feel the rejuvenating effects this has had.

My boyfriend is a huge advocate for the “working vacation” – scheduling in productive time in the mornings at a local coffee shop before enjoying time off for the rest of the day. “Productive time” doesn’t mean working a 9-to-5 corporate job during these vacations. It just means setting tasks to accomplish to help move forward in life: finishing a creative writing piece, working on a side project, reflecting on lessons learned. I am a naturally pretty productive person at baseline and I love the high of getting something done as much as he does. I still think setting aside time for these pursuits is important.

However, lately I’ve been flirting with the idea of also setting aside time to Do Nothing. And by Doing Nothing, I don’t mean mindfulness or meditation or even reflection. I really just mean giving my mind the freedom and space to completely relax and wander to wherever it wants to go, without the pressure of having to learn something new or get something done. This definitely isn’t a new idea and I’ve heard more and more discussion on the benefits of Doing Nothing as people find themselves exhausted by isolation and the pressure to be productive. 

I’ve been Doing Nothing in small doses prior to this vacation. On my afternoon walks, I’d stopped putting on a podcast and just sit in the park among the hubbub of life around me. On this vacation, I took it a step further. I didn’t set any goals to finish a project or learn something new about the city we were visiting. We walked around a vaguely-planned path and were flexible with how we structured our time. I had my phone on airplane mode most of the time to avoid using data abroad and I let my mind be as present as it wanted to be in the moment. I reached for it less, mindlessly scrolled through Instagram less, and didn’t see message notifications until the end of the day when we were back in the WiFi of where we were staying. When I allowed my brain to wander wherever it wanted to go, I naturally did the amount of work and learning that felt good in the moment. I reached for my sketchbook when I wanted to, left drawings unfinished when I wanted to, and didn’t try to meet a quota of drawings done on vacation. It doesn’t mean that I didn’t learn or do anything during this vacation (quite the opposite). It just means I learned and did precisely the amount that felt natural and good and didn’t pressure myself to do anything more or less.

I didn’t intentionally plan to Do Nothing – it happened because I was too exhausted from all the work I’d been doing before vacation to plan to do anything productive during vacation. When I stepped out of the airport back at home, I expected to feel the the shock and dread of jumping right back into the grind of the workday the next day. Instead, I feel productive and inspired, without feeling exhausted.

I’m not saying that Doing Nothing is the antidote for everybody, but I definitely notice its effect on me right now. I also don’t think I could have gone on for much longer than a week and a half of Doing Nothing. I think that was the perfect amount of time for me to unwind and to come back refreshed without feeling guilty about how unproductive I was. I also think that being in a completely new environment allowed me to feel enough stimulation during those one and a half weeks to not feel bored by my lack of Doing. 

My roommate was telling me about how different people have different baselines of activity (i.e. my baseline of activity is quite high) and everyone strives to achieve a similar, balanced level of activity (i.e. I feel refreshed from Doing Nothing because it lowers my high baseline of activity to something more balanced. Someone else might feel refreshed from Constantly Doing because it raises their naturally low baseline of activity to something more balanced.) I’m not sure exactly where he got this information from and will have to check the source, but it feels to me as if I struck the perfect balance of inactivity for me to feel refreshed from this vacation.

I’ve started thinking about the way I currently schedule my time and what I can learn from my time Doing Nothing. Currently, I try to work my 9-to-5 as productively as possible (though not always possible) during the day, while trying to carve out as much time as I can for my other pursuits. Then on the weekends, I try to catch up on my side projects and feel the need to be as productive as I can to make up for the time lost during the weekday. I think I could potentially do better to schedule in more Nothing Time, maybe on the weekdays to make for more productive weekends. I’m still wrapping my head around this learning, but I’ll let you know if I find an effective way of incorporating it into my current lifestyle. For now, I’m just happy to to be refreshed and relaxed from Doing Nothing and back to happily Doing Something.

Cheers, Em.