Be More Lazy
You may feel like you're doing 'nothing', but inside your brain, the exact opposite is true...
Quickly, before we lazily get on with this week’s newsletter… If you’re already feeling that Spring Clean energy, a reminder that The Journal can help you clear out the bits from your life that are no longer serving you, keep in the stuff that you love and provide you with the tools and structure to plan out an amazing, game-changing year.
I’ve written about this a little before, here, but there is this (unhelpful!) idea in our society that we should always be doing more. I’ll hold my hand up and admit I sometimes perpetuate it, with suggestions on habits, goals and the like…
Of course doing more can be great.
But, have you also tried doing nothing?
Because neuroscience studies are increasingly showing that there are amazing physical, mental and emotional benefits to stopping and being lazy from time to time.
The fact is, even we we’re not working, most of us feel like we should be doing something – listening to a podcast in the car, going to a yoga class, sorting through that drawer we all have (you know, the one full of useless crap). If we’re not busy, if we’re not being productive, if we’re not getting through our To-do list, then we may feel as if we’re not ‘achieving’.
Yet what is it we are hoping to achieve? We’ll never complete our To-do list, and even when we do empty that drawer, it somehow fills itself back up within a month…
I am guilty of this myself – believing for a long time that my sense of self was tied up with being productive. These days, I think I’m better at looking for the moments in between. Of taking a bath in the middle of the day if I’m working from home and feel frazzled. Of knowing I can’t come up with new ideas unless I carve in some ‘nothing’ time to my week. Of appreciating that my brain wants – needs! – downtime. Of starting to know, in my bones, that a bit of laziness helps me be better in all areas of my life, from managing a big workload to snapping less at my partner – much like my daily meditation practice, I feel like it helps me think more creatively, know myself better and ultimately show up as an improved version of myself, both for me and my loved ones.
And my feelings are backed up by science! According to research, when we’re being lazy, and our brain fires up its default mode network, our mind starts to do things like wander, ruminate, recall past experiences, think about others’ mental states, envision the future and process language or things we’ve learned. Stuff that perhaps we don’t always associate with the being ‘productive’ and yet the director of the Stanford Cognitive & Systems Neuroscience Laboratory, recently posited that these functions are helpful in constructing an internal narrative. In his view, being lazy – firing up the default mode network – helps you think about who you are in relation to others, your past experiences and then use that to create a coherent self-narrative. Sounds pretty important to me…
And the benefits don’t stop there. Others include:
Mental recovery – especially in this modern world, it feels like we overload our minds with technology and distractions. The brain likes a break.
Improves creativity – allowing the mind to wander tends to help us think more innovatively.
Increases empathy – the more mind wandering and daydreaming we do, the more likely we are to think about other people and how we treat them.
Linked to lower levels of cortisol – the stress hormone which is helpful when you need it, but very unhelpful when you don’t (which is often).
Problem solving – improves ability to think logically and make decisions.
Improves mood – rest helps us recharge our minds and better regulate our emotions.
Increases productivity – I’m slightly loathe to say this (i.e. does it go against the entire premise of the piece!? answers below pls) but it has been repeatedly proven that doing a bit of nothing vastly improves our ability to do everything else.
So, if you’re the kind of person who needs permission to stop, consider this a sign to build a bit more nothing into your day… Let yourself daydream, encourage your mind to wander, walk in nature without any distractions. Be more lazy.
Know someone who needs more lazy moments in their life? Send this on!
I always loved doing this! And I would almost say that I was great at this years ago, before I got my first smartphone. I stuck with my old phone for a long time and found that this made me much more present in life. Once I caught up with the trend of smartphones, everything went downhill. Smartphones just provide SO much distraction…. Sometimes I try to deliberately make time to just let my brain do nothing like I did a lot years ago and it truly is rejuvenating. It is hard to convince myself to want to do it though because there are so many interesting things to do on my phone…