Making Time for Nothing

---

This post is backdated, not because I was busy or distracted, but because I am a recovering perfectionist—”recovering” being the main word here. Recovery isn’t smooth and seamless, (apologies to break it to my fellow perfectionists), it’s bumpy, messy, and it wouldn’t be progress without all the mistakes along the way. For this reason, it took a couple months to scrounge up the courage to publish this first post. Here it is:

---

1 June 2024

We moved recently, to a small town outside the city, where the landscape rolls into dry, wooded hills. The local barbecue joint is family owned, of course, and the employees already know our faces. I love the way a new town always feels like a fresh start, a reset, a chance to try again. But when many life changes crop up all at once—as they have for me lately—the resulting mixture of new experiences and complex challenges can create a strange emotional blend of both wonder and overwhelm.

Unsurprisingly, I’ve been exhausted for the last month. Each day, I wake up inexplicably tired after a full night of sleep. If I go out on an errand, I find myself weak on my feet after only an hour or two. Last week, I stood looking around the furniture consignment shop, realizing that if I sat down in one of the cushy armchairs or soft sofas and closed my eyes, I could fall asleep right then and there in the crowded store. Even my Oura ring is alerting me, with increasing daily urgency, that my recovery is on the decline and my HRV balance is off.

Stubbornly, I have been stumped at these signs because, “I am taking care of myself.” I’m sure of it. I’m doing everything right—optimizing my sleep and diet with the help of a coach, exercising when I have the energy, spending time outside, reaching out to friends for support, and attempting to make gentle progress on my endless to do list. Nothing is helping and I continue to feel increasingly and mysteriously ill at each passing day…

Until, a couple days ago, a realization slowly dawned on me that the only thing I wasn’t doing… was nothing. I wasn’t taking breaks of unstructured time. I wasn’t resting. I didn’t schedule any days to be deliberately unplanned. Instead of turning my brain off for short periods during the day, I was using those breaks to think, plan, worry, and stay busy.

Prior to the move, I followed a loose daily routine which provided balance. In the mornings, I walked the dog. Then I did some work, ate lunch, and took a little afternoon break, which is the time of day in which I tend to get a low-energy slump. Those breaks usually looked like plopping down on the couch to play a game on my phone, curling up with a book in the reading chair, or sitting outside without electronics while the dog explored the yard.

These “nothing” moments—that I mentally dismissed as meaningless because they were “not productive”—were actually giving my body time to physiologically recalibrate. Resting gives the mind time to let go; a reprieve from planning and worry. It offers an opportunity to be present with our bodies and environment. During these moments, I had relief from racing thoughts or self-criticism about whether I was getting “enough” done. On the contrary, I had time to reflect on what work I had done, what accomplishments, big or small, I’d had that day. This unstructured time allowed me to give myself the gift of rest and presence… and let myself be.

It turns out that “doing nothing” isn’t nothing. It is a valuable reset for mind and body. It facilitates recuperation from the normal stressors of life. And it’s essential for a foundation of basic well-being. Cutting unstructured time out of my daily life (and being blind to its value) made me sick. My body felt unwell every day; I woke up exhausted, my mind was ill with near-constant negative self-talk, and my spirit suffered from lack of connection with the present moment.

So I made a commitment to myself this past week: I set aside one full day of nothing planned. No obligations, no structure, no to-do list, nowhere to be. And I have to say, it felt so good. It was uncomfortable to let go of worry and buzzing busyness, and I had to exercise a lot of self-compassion while I lazed on the couch all day. The most I did was walk the dog up the street for ten minutes, and sit outside in the sun. The reward for this “lazy” day with a restful night of sleep and better energy the next morning, as well as my Oura ring registering the first low-stress day in weeks, and indicating that my resting heart rate had finally balanced out.

I’m determined to stay put in this new house for several years, so I at least won’t have to experience the stress of moving again for sometime. Still, I never know what life will throw at me… I learned the hard way the value of making time for nothing, and that’s a lesson I can take with me, come what may.