In recent years, there has been a growing concern about people’s ever-increasing stress levels during daily activities. In order to overcome this issue, certain psychologists advise the public to completely refrain from doing anything for a selected part of the day. I firmly agree with this advice due to its technical simplicity as well as practicality and how it could serve humans to reflect on their life more positively.
The world we live in is already filled with overcomplicated, overstructured and overwhelming sensory and physical stimulants. If we are try to eradicate stress by adding more complex activities or tasks, naturally the management of stress will not be optimal. There will be significant risk of people giving up the intervention half-way. This is where not engaging in any activity for designated time comes in handy. This approach is very simple and easy to follow, it can be easily understood and very practical even if you are a child or even an older adult. All because of simplistic nature, this approach can even be implemented on people with certain disabilities, such as Down’s syndrome and Autism. Therefore, this way of managing stress will help vast categories of people regardless of their intellectual capacity, gender, age and socio economical status.
On the other hand, “doing nothing” is a great tool for humans to reflect on their own life, surrounding, relationships and spirituality. As we live in a world where everything is fast-paced and you can get anything done just by a simple tap on your phone, actively practising not doing anything will give people immense time to focus on things and scenarios which matters to them most. For example, when someone who works two jobs, raising children without a partner and suffers from chronic stress takes time to “do nothing”, he or she will be able to see the fact that every dark cloud has a silver lining. Humans are naturally built to overthink and compare, not doing anything is a great tool to practise take a step back and breathe in and out to calm yourself down.
In conclusion, just as the psychologists, I am also strongly advocating for people to consider do nothing for specific period when life becomes too much to handle. It will give you the strength and will power to face the problems head-on.