The Value in Doing Nothing

    When I was younger, my days were filled with sports, music lessons, and various hobbies. I crammed my weekends and after-schools with activities and friends, not wanting to waste a second of time. Like most kids, I loved playing outside with my neighbors after dinner and dreaded the time of night when it became too dark, and my parents would call me inside to go to bed. I didn’t understand the point of sleeping in late, much in contrast to my older brother. Unlike some who tried to push back their bedtime when they were young, I tried to push back my wake-up time. I couldn’t comprehend the happiness that others, like my brother, found in staying in bed past the early morning and doing nothing all day. I promised myself that I would never become a person who “wasted time” sleeping in and being lazy.

    I continued to stay true to my word throughout several years of my life; however, upon entering high school, this promise became harder to uphold. My first issue was school sports. When I joined the track team my freshman year and then the swim team soon after, in the first semester of my sophomore year, I understood for the first time why people liked having the ability and time to do nothing. Practices that ended at six or seven pm each night, on top of lengthy meets every weekend, quickly became demanding. As I drove home in the dark each school day, tired from practice and thinking about unfinished homework that had to be completed, I found myself wishing for a chance to forget about my responsibilities for one day and just sit around and do nothing. However, for most of my freshman and sophomore years, I did not allow myself to do that, even on the days when I had the opportunity to. I forced myself to continue waking up early on the weekends, dragging my family into doing things with me so I felt busy. Wherever I had the free time, I squeezed in activities to keep myself occupied. I realize now that a large part of that was because I felt like school and school-related activities had overtaken my life, and I was losing the freedoms I used to have. I felt that if I used my free time to sit and do nothing or sleep instead of keeping up with hobbies and activities I enjoyed, I would lose my identity outside of school, and it would become my entire life.

    This perspective and way of living stayed the same until junior year. Although things were alright at the beginning of the year, by the time November/December rolled around, I was tired and overwhelmed. Homework and test prep were piling up, and swim practices took over my evenings, leaving me with late nights of studying. Even my weekends were no longer free, spent at swim meets or the library. I could no longer maintain the activities and freedoms that I used to fill my extra time with. The only thing I wished for was to shut my brain off for a few hours, which was only achievable by sleeping or mindlessly watching a show, things I had once defined as “wasting time”. Although when I was a kid, I promised myself it was the last thing I’d ever do, I learned this year that doing nothing can, at times, be vital to staying focused on other aspects of life. I don’t believe that I could have been nearly as accomplished in school this year if it was not for the time that I have spent doing nothing. I no longer view it as a burden, like my childhood self, or a thief of my freedom, like my early high school self. I recognize now that the act of doing nothing is accomplishing something in itself. Setting aside time for doing nothing allows you to recharge and reset your mind to be able to continue putting forth your best effort in everything else you do.