Save The Earth - Do Nothing

This looks like a nice place to lay down and do nothing for a few minutes.

“Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under the trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of the water or watching the clouds float across the sky is by no mean a waste of time.”

- John Lubbock

I am liking this quote right now, as the signs of seasonal change are upon us. 

Precious hours of daylight are getting shorter, the hummingbird feeder is less crowded, the garden wants harvesting, and Southern Hemispherians are talking about spring again. 

I have to lie on the grass and enjoy summer before it is gone.

Back to the quote. 

Rest is good, but what's wrong with idleness? I fully endorse idleness. In any season. Anton Chekhov thought that "there is no happiness that is not idleness".

The world would be better off if everyone were restful, relaxed, still, quiet, sedentary, or idle, more often. Blasé Pascal agreed when he wrote, 

"All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone."

People in consumer cultures often report wanting to have a break from the drudgery of it all. Work. Shop. Repeat. When do we ever stop?

After several decades of labour saving devices, why do we still have no time to sit quietly in a room alone? Because in the non-stop world of consuming, our insatiable desires must be met 24/7.

What if we were to increase our relaxation/contemplation time by 5%? 10%? 50%? I can guarantee that would be a life changing event, and I speak from both a research perspective as well as personal experience.

Increasing our non-consumptive activities has the power to make us happier and healthier. 

And it would certainly result in less harm to the environment.

Save the Earth - Do nothing more often.

Do Nothing

People are always in a rush to do something, anything. But sometimes doing nothing is a viable alternative that should be considered.

If you are bleeding profusely, you probably need medical intervention. However, in my experience, things like aches and pains often go away on their own if one is patient.

Even though we have universal health care in Canada, I try to stay away from doctors as much as possible. The average "medical professional" will want to do something even if doing nothing is the way to go. Sometimes the cure is worse than the issue at hand.

Preventable medical errors are the third leading cause of death (after heart disease and cancer) in the US, a statistic that reflects what can happen in any modern medical system with a do-something-at-any-cost mentality. And the cost of these errors in the US? 1 trillion dollars per year.

"It has taken a lot to prove to [the medical community] that many of these deaths are not a natural consequence of the underlying disease. They are purely failures of the system." 

- Ashish Jha, MD, Harvard School of Public Health

I have often found that things I initially thought were problems, given the passage of time, were not anything I needed to do something about. The problem fixes itself without my intervention, or I discover that I was wrong, and no problem existed in the first place.

Either way, nothing needed to be done.

The best is when you do have a problem, then wait patiently, and find that the problem fixes itself. It can happen. Often, vehicle issues fall under this category. Linda and I call this "self-fixing", and it has happened often in the vehicles we have owned. Only once have we ever been stranded at the side of the road. At that point it was time to do something.

I have to wonder if self-fixing has something to do with the power of thoughts, quantum mechanics, and the underlying reality of the Universe. What if we are way more powerful than we think?

Or when one has a broken heart. What is to be done? Nothing. Be patient and let time work its magic.

If you have a gash in your skin and you are bleeding all over the place, you should do something about it, and right away. But we do not always need to spring into action for every perceived "problem".

In the right situations, all we need to do is give ourselves permission to do nothing.

We Are Destroying Earth

Sure is hard, difficult and uncomfortable to be paying attention these days. You can ignore all the bad news if you wish, but the only way to make it go away permanently is to pay attention, then do something about it.

Thankfully, there are many good people that ARE doing something about it, including many of the readers of this blog and blogs like it. But we need more people. Way more. A critical mass of people that are pissed off and that won't take this crap any more.

The following is from Annarky's Blog, a place I visit daily.

"It is now obvious that the corporate world, is destroying the planet. Ground water is contaminated, rivers are polluted, oceans and seas are poisoned, glaciers are melting, forests are stripped bare. Natural habitats disappear under a carpet of tarmac and industrial constructions, more and more species become extinct. All this is done for profit to benefit the few. If we continue as we are doing, it is only a matter of time before the species responsible for this insane destruction of our planet will join the ever growing list of extinct species. 

Where does the state stand in all this? Take a glance around and it becomes obvious. Where resistance to this killing of the planet grows and gets in the way of corporate profit, the state apparatus, as the corporate world's hit squad, moves in and attempts to crush that resistance to the corporate greed and insanity."

Read more at: http://radicalglasgowblog.blogspot.ca, and thank you for paying attention and taking action. While no one can do everything, everyone can do something.

Do Nothing

The world would be a much better place if people would do nothing more often. Generally people want to do something all the time. This tendency to motion and busyness can be dangerous to humans and other living things.

I am guilty of mindless busyness sometimes too, and it is no wonder. I was born and raised in the land of perpetual, systemic busyness - North America. Here the way to success is to just do stuff, and it doesn't really matter what.

Keep moving. Go faster.

Whatever you do, don't stop. Ever.

Unless you have a herniated disk, in which case you have an unlimited licence to do nothing.

Doing Nothing Monday

"Save the World - Do Nothing"
Think of the personal stress and environmental damage we could avoid if
we did nothing more often.

Many summers ago I was camping with a group of friends, and our music and merriment stretched into the early morning. A woman emerged from the tent on the site next to us. In her house coat, she approached our campfire.

"When do you people stop?" she asked while throwing her hands towards the sky as the stars quietly disappeared.

We all looked at each other and shrugged our shoulders. "Do we stop?" someone honestly asked.

"I don't think we do," another friend observed.

It is the same with our culture of busyness, formerly known as The Rat Race. Now it is just the race.

When do we stop?

People often confuse busyness with doing something.

Lao Tzu, the chilled out Chinese philosopher didn't. Ever mindful, the author that wrote the Tao Te Ching, said, "Doing nothing is better than being busy doing nothing."

How much of our busyness is doing nothing? Or worse, how much of it is not only unnecessary, but also harmful to ourselves and others?

Since 2008 Linda and I have been experimenting with doing less with less. We stopped the busyness. We started doing more nothing.

Prior to the Great Recession we were already working toward a more peaceful lifestyle. We quit working full time and threw away our  planners and day-timers. Thus ended the perpetual multi-tasking state of mind that needs organized distractions in order to recover.

Leisure activities and holidays can be just as busy and frantic as back home. When do we stop? Or even slow down?

Our culture is obsessed with busyness. It is a drug to which many are addicted, and the repercussions prevent us from doing the important work.

Since slowing down we focus on single-tasking. It is a "when eating a banana, just eat the banana" state of mind.

Do Nothing - Spring Still Comes, Grass Still Grows

It is a basic fact of life that stuff must get done. We also occasionally need to have a sense of accomplishment - it can feel good to get stuff done. But what stuff, and how often?

We are often told that life is hard, but not told that at times it should be, and can be, easy. Getting by does not need to be a constant struggle.

As the Zen saying advises, 'sit quietly, do nothing, and still Spring comes and the grass grows by itself'.

So rest, take a break, do nothing. Heck, go as far as to be idle, slack, and daydreamy for a while. Then, when it is time to do something you will be able to give 100% of yourself.

Do Nothing Monday

Doing nothing is just as important as doing something. 

In order to make life better, sometimes it is not a case of doing more. Sometimes gains are attained by doing less.

Even in a simple life it is necessary to remind one's self to slow down, stop, and, do nothing.


Keeping Quiet
Pablo Neruda


And now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still...

For once on the face of the earth
let's not speak in any language,
let's stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engineers,
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.

Fishermen in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would look at his hurt hands.

Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victory with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.

What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.
(Life is what it is about,
I want no truck with death.)

If we were not so singleminded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.

Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seemed dead
and later proves to be alive.

Now I'll count up to twelve,
and you keep quiet and I will go.

Take a Break: Do Nothing

Sometimes doing nothing is better than doing something

George Carlin often paced the stage and wondered out loud about motivation. He didn't see any lack of motivation in the world, but observed that a lot of it seemed to be misdirected. We always feel that we need to "do something" because doing something is always the default setting. We don't want to be seen as unmotivated.

Most of us are motivated to do a lot. The 80/20 Rule states that about 20% of our efforts account for 80% of the results. Knowing this can help us live, by focusing on goals and the effective actions that help us meet them.

There is enough to do in life without adding things that do not get us closer to our goals. If 80% of outcomes are due to the most effective 20% of our actions, what about the 80% of what we do that accounts for only 20% of our results? Our ineffective efforts can be dropped to be focused on more fruitful activities. Like doing nothing.

We need time to do nothing. Not having a balance between action and rest affects our health and happiness. To get you started click on this link: Do Nothing For Two Minutes. It is harder than it seems.

I am curious about this frenetic phenomena, and am considering starting a companion blog to NBA called Not Doing Anything. Do you have difficulty doing nothing?

"All human evil comes from a single cause, man's inability to sit still in a room."
- Blaise Pascal

There Is A Bench Somewhere With Your Name On It

Benches are beacons of slow in our fast paced world. They are a blast from the past, and a reminder that we sometimes need to STOP. Our culture places such great emphasis on doing, and very little on being. Benches are about being.

I make a point of giving in to the call of the slow, and allow myself to indulge in benches in beautiful locations. The bench above is one such example. It is in Whiffen Spit Park in Sooke, BC, and is one of many strategically placed slow zones provided for rest and quiet contemplation.

The waves come in, the waves go out. The waves come in, the waves go out. The breath comes in, the breath goes out. Ahhh... Everything else fades away.

When you see a bench with your name on it, allow yourself to stop and just be for a while.

Spending Time Being

Where is the section for "Do Nothing"?

One of the best things about living simply is the increase in leisure time over the regular work schedule with 2 weeks off a year. Having a more relaxed schedule gives me time to do things that are important to me, such as just being. This is a scary thing to do for most of us, and it was for me at first, too.


North Americans are not very good at doing nothing. In 2005 it was found that for all persons over age 15 there were 5.1 hours of leisure time on an average day. Fully half of that time is taken up watching TV. Check out the other categories above, but notice that there is no slice of the pie for "Do Nothing". We don't do nothing very well.

In our perpetual busy lives we are addicted to doing. We are programmed to be producing something at all times. Otherwise, we feel we are wasting our time. I am just as guilty as anyone - my default is doing, not being. But with more time, I am getting better at taking time for me to be.  

I am able to give myself being time, but can become impatient when I feel that nothing worthwhile is happening. But over the months something is happening, and I feel subtle and positive changes. 

Being time is very important. It nourishes and replenishes our energies so we can continue to give and do. I can feel how spending time not doing improves the time I spend doing. I am more able and energetic. More relaxed and unflappable in the face of life.

Being time is also a time to tap into our inner guidance and inspiration. It is a time to allow our intuition to help steer us through decision making in novel and creative ways. A time to regain our balance. 

Time spent in calm, quiet, and centeredness is never time wasted. Try it and do nothing. Be patient. Give yourself the gift of ceasing doing, even for a short while. Sometimes the best action to take is no action at all.

"To do nothing at all is the most difficult thing in the world, the most difficult and the most intellectual."

-- Oscar Wilde