The Art of Doing Nothing

A months ago, I have an issue that I must solves immediately. At that times, I feel I can’t solve it optimum. It seems that, I’m facing the dead end. I try to recall all the possible answers but still, I can’t find the best solutions. Hate to say it, but give up maybe is the last option that I’ve to take.

But then, this idea is suddenly show up in my mind, and if I’ve might say, it’s not bad at all, it can works! And I feel so thrilled to make it done. Yes, I’m ready to rumbled! But you know what, when is the idea pop up in my head? That’s when I’m zoned out for a moment while lying in my sofa. Yes, you are not heard it wrong, it’s totally when I had done nothing at all.

Here’s the fact, in our busy world, moments of stillness will help us reset. When we stop our brains to work constantly, we give space to a new ideas to pop up! It’s because we let our mind and bodies to relax, by then we feel less stress and recharge our energy, and a new ideas will easily come out. A mind wandering is a balance between Focus and Day Dreaming. While focus is essentials for productivity, mind wandering is essentials for deep thinking, innovation and relaxation.

When we are do nothing and zoning out, it will activate our brain to do mind wandering. There is a part of our brain that is more active when we do nothing. What is actually happened? First, We are slowly understanding how the world works. What we see, what we read, what we had experienced before became makes sense. We are trying to connects all in order to build a comprehensive understanding, and it will only happens when we let our mind wandering. More and more we let our mind wandering, we will become an expert to arrange our personal goals, become more creative and make a decision calmly and can applied for a long term. Second, When we do mind wandering, our brain will make a new connections from various things, and in the end will lead our brain to produce an answers or solutions to our problems. It’s because we give our brain a space, so our brain tries to make everything is make sense. Third, Our mind will prepare the next possibility which will arise. It’s like time-mental travel. Our mind will explores the pasts and trying to predicts the futures. Trying to anticipate the right and wrong, the mistakes and the benefits of our problems.

So it means that, doing nothing really helps us to stimulate our new ideas and creativity, as our minds free to wandering and exploring. But I know we are struggling to do this in the modern society, because we have so many things that stolen our focus, more over this will challenge society expectations, that we must always be productive, no times for zoning out! Zoning out is strictly not allowed! But because we already know why we have to do it, we have to make it happens. My kids sometimes told me that they are bored, have nothing to do, and I said to them, Wow, it’s good, just do nothing, embrace your boredomness. By then you will have new ideas to do something. And it’s always works! After they keep do nothing, usually they do something creative like drawing, doing crafts or even writing. Do you know all the great ideas and innovations came from the state of stillness? By doing nothing? You don’t believe me? This is the easy one, story that known by all human being. It’s Newton, who found the Law of Gravity, he found it while he was lying in a grass, mind-wandering and saw the apple falling from the tree! Or The Post-it Note, you know this one, right? It was found by Spencer Silver while he mind-wandering about a better way to mark pages.

It doesn’t have to be that big, but we can create our own innovation and ideas that is relate to our works or daily life. Even a housewife can do this. No worries, there are so many things we can do as a house wife to make the chores more efficient and simple, we just need to little bit mind-wandering lying in sofa emptying your mind, or take a shower, and let the water clear your mind. And it suddenly, we will shout : Aha! That’s it!

Love,

Kirana