‘Time is money’, a friend would say complaining about being seated in the plane back rows while waiting in the cue before leaving it. Typical finance raider, he would always shoot for the stars or question marks - investments with high income and high cash consumption - and never, ever, a long-term lower yield deposit. A-type personality, he firmly believes that being a 110% proactive investor would take him faster to the winning line. He missed though that there is no point in climbing the podium and remaining a rat.

Like my friend, many of us go through life as the white rabbit in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: always in a hurry and never getting to the destination. We forget Gandhi’s words that ‘there is more to life than increasing its speed’ creating an enormous unnecessarily task list just for the pleasure of checking things off there. We naively believe that being busy will shield us from emptiness and the idea that life can go without us. With the foot permanently in the accelerator, we dry out the fuel of life. As noted in The Shining by Stephen King, ‘all work and no play make Jack a dull boy’. 

As noted by Manfred Kets de Vries in ‘Sex, Money, Happiness, and Death: The Quest for Authenticity’, in an action-oriented world structured under the pillars of multitasking, hyperactivity, and instant response, doing nothing is often associated with irresponsibility, wasted life, terrifying space which breeds doubt and fear. This compulsive, relentless, addictive behavior towards busyness is counterproductive. Rather than meaningfully occupied, we often lose connection with one another, become alienated from ourselves, constrict creativity, push out of the door feelings and needs that later will come back through the window. The busyness is like a drug or fast food which gives temporary high but is not sustainable in the long term. In the words of Jane Austen, living this way equals to ‘quick succession of busy nothings’.  

Stepping off the rats’ treadmill, which spins faster and faster, can actually help us to progress more quickly and effectively. As explained by Kets de Vries, doing nothing/feeling bored not only provides the incubation space for ‘out of the blue’ solutions, ‘Eureka’ experiences to occur, but also puts us in sync with who we really are and what really matters contributing to smart work towards something substantial. 

When I first started yoga I sought to step into the break, investing my energy into sustainable deposits rather than expensive ‘star’/’question mark’ ventures. Moving from doing to being in a 60 to 90 minutes yoga session was a too big step for the size of my legs. I needed a transitional place where the doing would still be present but slowly fade away making space for the being.

I took myself for long solo outdoor hiking and bicycle ridings where the challenge of figuring out the way and contemplating nature (still doing) shifts into boredom and finding ways of circumventing it leads to creativity (being). 

It doesn’t matter which activity you choose provided you are able to stay alone resisting the tic-tac of the clock while moving from a mapped (doing) to uncharted territory (being). You might wish to quit especially when the restless monkey mind assaults with all sorts of excuses (hunger, tiredness, meaningless, unrewarding nature of the activity). Withstand so that you are able to transcend your adult voice becoming an imaginative kid seeing shapes and no longer clouds in the sky.