When Did Doing Nothing Become So Difficult?

There was a time when waiting meant waiting. If you arrived early for a meeting, you sat there. If someone was late for lunch, you looked around the room. If you were standing in a queue, there was not much to do except move forward slowly with everyone else.

Today, a spare thirty seconds is enough time to reach for a phone. It has become such an automatic movement that we barely notice ourselves doing it. We check a message we have already read, look at the news again or open an app without having any particular reason to open it. Sometimes we put the phone away and immediately take it out again a minute later.

Technology has removed many of the small inconveniences that used to be part of everyday life. We no longer have to wonder when someone will arrive, remember a telephone number or spend half an evening trying to remember the name of an actor in a film. Almost any question can be answered immediately. At the same time, we have also removed many of the empty moments from the day.

Those moments used to be unremarkable. A journey involved looking out of the window. Waiting for someone meant watching people come and go. Standing in a queue gave you nothing in particular to do. Nobody would have called any of this useful, but usefulness was not really the point.

Boredom now feels more like a problem that needs to be solved. The moment our attention becomes free, there is something available to occupy it. There is always another message, article, photograph, video or piece of news. Even when none of it is especially interesting, it is often more tempting than doing nothing.

What is interesting is how many thoughts arrive when there is nothing competing for them. A problem that seemed complicated earlier can become clearer while walking somewhere. An idea appears in the shower. You suddenly remember something important while staring out of a window. The mind seems quite capable of finding its own work when we stop giving it work to do.

This may be why some of the best conversations also happen when there is no real agenda. Lunch continues longer than expected, a meeting finishes and people remain at the table, or a conversation moves away from the reason everyone got together in the first place. The useful part is often the part nobody planned.

We are not very comfortable with unplanned time anymore. Even weekends can become exercises in scheduling. We begin with two days of freedom and gradually fill them with meals, errands, exercise, messages we did not answer during the week and all the things we said we would get around to when we had more time. By Sunday evening, we can feel strangely tired from our time off.

There is a similar instinct in business. A gap in the calendar looks available, so something goes into it. A meeting ends early and we immediately turn to the next task. Being busy is visible in a way that thinking is not, which may explain why one is much easier to justify than the other.

None of this means we should throw away our phones or start deliberately missing appointments so we can experience the pleasure of waiting. Convenience is still convenient. The interesting part is how quickly we have gone from filling empty time when we want to, to feeling slightly uncomfortable when we cannot.

Doing nothing has acquired a bad reputation. It sounds lazy, wasteful and unproductive. Yet some of the most enjoyable parts of a weekend are often the ones that never make it into the calendar.

We have become extremely good at filling time. Leaving some of it alone may be the harder skill.