Episode 20, How to Do Nothing

Before smartphones, boredom was just a part of life — and it turns out, it might have been doing something important. This week we're exploring the lost art of idling: what happens when you stop filling every spare moment, and why the ability to do nothing in particular might be one of the most valuable skills you're not practicing. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:16

Hello there. This is Anthony Alvarado, and the name of this show is The Rough Draft. Thank you for listening and tuning in. Today I want to talk about the art of doing nothing in particular, you know? Like loafing around, idling, hanging out, not really doing much. It's kind of a lost art, you know? It's something that we don't let ourselves experience or do as much as we used to. I was thinking about this. I when I was a little kid, I grew up like way out there, way out in the boonies, out in the woods. And we had to take like an hour-long bus ride to get to school. And I know this is starting to this is starting to sound like one of those stories about oh, when I was a kid, we had to walk uphill in the snow both ways. But yeah, that's I guess that's what I'm doing here. So yeah, I'd take this hour-long bus ride uh before we had iPhones, and there was just nothing to do. And it was weirdly quiet. Uh, I'm not sure why. But yeah, you would just like stare out the window and space out. Like that's what I would do every morning, which sounds hella boring. I know, but it wasn't because what I found out was that I had a very vivid imagination filled with all kinds of wonderful, fantastical stories and ideas and images. And I think that during the couple of years where we lived way out, way past the Dalles, past Hood River. A couple of years where I was doing that as like a little kid, you know, I was like seven or eight or something. I was actually really training this very real muscle in in my brain called the imagination, uh, to do like the equivalent of like running a marathon every week, but for the imagination muscle. And that's something that I think really serves me to this day. I've had a very vivid imagination my whole life, and I'm really good at daydreaming and spacing out. And yeah, it it's something that I think I got from those long, long bus rides and not having like a device, not having like a you know, a Game Boy or whatever. So yeah, I was thinking about that. Sorry for the uh back in my day story, but that's something that you know it's interesting. I think that the world's changing so fast and in so many ways that those of us as we're going through this, as we're going through these changes, we're experiencing like this this moment of like you can see the future happening and you can see what the past was like. And so I I do think it's important to like talk about this stuff. And what I'm circling is is like the lost art of being bored, the skill set of twiddling your thumbs, of loafing, of standing around with nothing much to do, of idling. Walt Whitman said, I loaf and invite my soul in leaves of grass. And yeah, I think that captures something when you're loafing, when you're idling, you're really spending time with yourself, kind of getting to know yourself in a way that we often don't do anymore. And weirdly, I I want to tie that idea into like another thing because I maybe you can feel it coming. Here comes the talk about getting off the phone, getting away from screens. You know, we've all heard it before, but I think that it's doable, you know. I think that we think we're at this place right now, um, where it's like it's kind of like smoking. It's like, remember back when like everybody could smoke everywhere all the time? Like, you know, doctors are smoking in doctors' offices. I mean, you might not remember this, but that was a thing. I don't even I barely remember like restaurants, they had smoking in restaurants. That was gross. I don't know. And even, you know, like I'm an ex-smoker, it took me a long time to kick the habit. But now I'm glad that I did. And I think that our addiction right now to phones and to screens and to apps is someday going to look like the world when you look back at like, wow, everybody was just smoking all the time everywhere. What the um I think it's gonna look a lot like that. I think that, or hopefully it will. But also when you quit, like when you quit something as addictive as smoking and you become an ex-smoker, yeah, it's tough. It's hella tough for a while, like for a couple of weeks, maybe a month. And then there comes a day when you pass by somebody smoking, somebody else in a cloud of nicotine, and you realize that you haven't thought about smoking yourself in days or weeks, even. And then you reach this point where the idea of smoking has lost all its appeal, and the idea of lighting a cigarette on fire and putting it in your mouth just sounds strange and a bit repulsive, honestly. Sorry, smokers, but yeah, that's kind of how I think that buying the time that we need to like space out, to be bored, to step away from our phones can feel. Uh, I recently I deleted um an app. I won't even name the app. I have an app on my phone that I had a tendency to like go to during all my downtime all the time, and it would like drain like hours of attention and and focus, and then I deleted it last month, and then I went through the the phases of uh addiction withdrawals. There was like a few weeks where I was like twitchy and like needed to have my app fixed, and now I don't even think about it. So, you know, it's like that. And if you're a ex-smoker like me, then you know, you know what I'm talking about. If you know, you know. That's kind of a long way of winding up to the main idea I wanted to share today is this approach of like how much downtime do you really need? You know, how much downtime? I mean, I'm talking about like you're slightly bored, you're not looking at a screen, you're not interacting with an app or a video feed or a computer or an AI or whatever, you know? Like how much of that do you think is healthy? Like what what would be the amount of like just slack time, like idle, slightly bored, spacing out, you know what I mean? Uh time that you think would be like ideal. Because I'm guessing, you know, it's probably more than just several minutes. I'm guessing it's like at you know, at least like a few hours a week, right? It reminds me of that idea about cardio exercise. You always hear 150 minutes. 150 minutes, that's basically like two hours, two and a half hours a week that they say that's how much your body needs to be in zone two to be, you know, you can still have a conversation, but you're getting a little sweaty. Light exercise, right? I think it's interesting that we have this really clear, all the experts agree you should give yourself maybe two, three hours where you're you're moving your butt, you're not just like sedentary, and it's still kind of like, yeah, no duh. Yeah, I just I want to imagine that same magic number, whatever it might be, for awareness for downtime. Hell, let's say it's 150 minutes, you know, like try to give yourself or think about your week. Are you giving yourself about that much time of like being off your phone, being off a screen, and not really having your awareness and attention like sucked into like doing something? So I guess it's not just I'm not just talking about getting off screens, but like having that downtime that like relax and unwind and not try to optimize your time. And I think you know, we we put all this attention and thought into oh, are we getting enough cardio? I mean, not all of us do. I I don't get 150 minutes of cardio if I'm being totally honest, but I'm saying culturally, you know, it's something that we we uh have in mind and we try to work towards. I probably do get that much cardio with depends on the week. Let's leave it at that. Having these goals or having these uh just kind of like targets, I think is like a really good conversation to have with yourself. And I think that the benefits also are great, just like exercising your heart has this really uh deep impact on all these zones across your life, exercising your imagination and giving yourself that that space that also has huge, huge benefits that um I mean, let's name them, it makes you more relaxed, it makes you happier, it makes you more creative, and uh I think it probably makes you just better at living life, better at connecting with others, lower stress, more embodied, more present. Um honestly, you could kind of probably apply a lot of that to both cardio or downtime, like time spent uh just chilling and not trying to achieve anything. I would count all kinds of stuff as counting towards that too, by the way. Like hanging out with friends, cooking, puttering around, probably gardening, taking strolls, chatting, goofing off, just like anything where it's like not like towards some optimization. You know what I mean? Yeah, if nothing else, you could get in that two, three hours of downtime just by walking. Two, three hours of walking without looking at your phone. A week, a week, okay? It's doable. So something to think about, something to consider. And yeah, if the idea sounds really scary, then maybe this idea is meant for you. And one, I think a great way to experiment with this sort of thing is to set up like a no screen time curfew at a certain hour, like pick a pick a number, whatever worked for you. And yeah, and again, if it all sounds difficult, then you know think back to that same story about how when you quit smoking, one day you just find that it's easy, it's easy not to smoke anymore. What seemed impossible and hard to imagine, eventually it becomes impossible and hard to imagine wanting to ever go back. So changing your habits around awareness and attention works the same way, I think. And I I believe that. You know, it's something that I'm working on myself. It's an ongoing process. I have my days where I uh slide and go down a YouTube rabbit hole or whatever, but then I I feel it, you know, the next day. So it's like an ongoing thing. And yeah, that's that's today's show. That's what I wanted to get into. That's what I wanted to have you considered to think about, like this idea of like how much downtime are you giving yourself to just space out, to idle, to do nothing in particular, to be lazy. And you know, it's uh it's an enjoyable thing that I think it's kind of like once you get into it, it's it gets easier and becomes more and more fun and more doable. Um yeah. All right, this show is the rough draft. I'm Anthony Alvarado. Thank you so much for tuning in. And you can check out previous episodes of the show anywhere that you get your podcasts, anywhere that you get your audio, you know, Apple, Spotify, all of that, as well as by visiting my website, AnthonyAlvarado.net. That's net N E T. And I'll see you again next week. Ciao, I'm gonna be able to get it.