I was sitting on my back porch the other day—well, it’s more of a cramped concrete slab with a single, slightly rusty folding chair, but I call it a porch—and I realized something. I had been sitting there for twenty minutes doing absolutely nothing. No phone, no podcast, not even a book. And for the first five of those minutes, I felt incredibly guilty about it. My brain was literally itching. It was telling me I should be weeding the garden, or answering those emails I flagged on Friday, or at the very least, listening to a “productive” audiobook so I could learn something new while I sat there.
Isn’t that exhausting? The fact that we’ve reached a point where just existing in a quiet moment feels like a moral failing? I think we’ve collectively forgotten how to just be. We’ve turned our lives into these high-performance engines that we’re constantly tuning, trying to squeeze out every last drop of efficiency. But the thing about engines is that if you run them at redline for too long, they eventually just… stop. They break. And I think a lot of us are starting to hear the engine smoking.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately—this “hustle” that’s snuck into every corner of our lives. It’s not just work anymore. It’s our hobbies, our rest, even our homes. Everything has to be “maximized.” But maybe, just maybe, the point of life isn’t to see how much we can pack into a suitcase before the zipper bursts. Maybe the point is to actually enjoy the trip.
The Myth of the Perfect Routine
If you go online for five minutes, you’ll find someone telling you that the secret to happiness is a 4:00 AM wake-up call, followed by a cold plunge, three hours of deep work, and a kale smoothie that tastes like grass clippings. We’re bombarded with these “ideal” routines that are supposed to turn us into superhuman versions of ourselves. I tried it once. I lasted about four days before I found myself crying over a burnt piece of toast at 5:30 AM because I was just so tired.
The problem is that these routines treat us like machines, not people. They don’t account for the days when you didn’t sleep well because the neighbor’s dog was barking, or the days when you’re just feeling a bit heavy and need an extra hour under the covers. Real life is messy. It’s unpredictable. And when we try to force it into this rigid, “optimized” box, we lose the very things that make life worth living—the spontaneity, the rest, the quiet detours.
I’ve learned that my best days aren’t the ones where I check off every single box on a list. They’re the ones where I leave enough space for something unexpected to happen. A long phone call with an old friend. A walk that lasts twenty minutes longer than I planned because the light hitting the trees looked particularly nice. That’s the stuff that sticks with you, not the fact that you answered twenty more emails before noon.
The Guilt of the Unproductive Hour
Why do we feel so bad when we aren’t “doing”? I think it’s because we’ve started equating our self-worth with our output. If I’m not producing something, or learning something, or improving something, then who am I? It’s a scary question. But here’s the thing: you are not a factory. You don’t have a “quarterly yield.” You’re a human being who needs time to just drift.
We need to reclaim the “unproductive” hour. The hour spent staring at the ceiling, or people-watching at a café, or tinkering with a hobby that you’re actually quite bad at and have no intention of ever getting good at. There’s a certain magic in being bad at something. It takes the pressure off. You’re just doing it for the sheer, messy joy of it.
Why Hobbies Became Work
Have you noticed how every hobby now has to be a “side hustle”? You can’t just enjoy baking bread; you have to start an Instagram account for your sourdough and eventually think about selling loaves at the farmer’s market. You can’t just like knitting; you should probably open an Etsy shop. It’s like we’ve lost the ability to do something just because it feels good.
The moment you try to monetize a hobby, or even just “optimize” it for social media, the joy starts to leak out. Suddenly, there’s a deadline. There’s feedback. There’s the pressure to perform. I used to love taking photos. I’d walk around with my old film camera and just snap things that looked interesting. Then I started thinking about “lighting” and “composition” and what would look good on a grid, and suddenly, I didn’t want to take photos anymore. It felt like a job I wasn’t getting paid for.
I’m trying to get back to that feeling of doing things for no reason. I’ve started sketching again. I’m terrible at it. My perspectives are all wrong, and my hands look like bunches of sausages. But it’s wonderful because it doesn’t matter. No one is ever going to see them. It’s just for me. There’s a profound freedom in that.
- Stop tracking everything: You don’t need a map of your run or a log of how many pages you read. Just run. Just read.
- Set “No-Goal” zones: Pick one activity where you promise yourself you will never try to be “the best” or make money from it.
- Embrace the mess: Let your hobbies be ugly. Let them be incomplete.
The Beauty of the Mundane
We’re always waiting for the “big” moments. The vacation, the promotion, the wedding, the weekend. We treat the Monday through Friday—the bulk of our actual lives—like a hurdle we have to jump over to get to the “real” stuff. But the mundane moments are where most of life actually happens. If we’re always looking toward the horizon, we miss the flowers right at our feet.
I’ve been trying to find the beauty in the small, boring things. The way the steam rises off the coffee in the morning. The sound of the wind in the chimney. The feeling of clean sheets. It sounds cheesy, I know. It sounds like something you’d see on a motivational poster in a dentist’s office. But there’s a grounding power in noticing these things. It pulls you out of your head—where you’re probably worrying about the future or relitigating the past—and puts you right here, in the present.
It takes practice, though. Our brains are wired to look for threats or opportunities, not to admire the texture of a brick wall. But when you start looking for the “boring” beauty, you start to realize that life isn’t as dull as you thought. You don’t need a mountain peak to feel awe. You can find it in a puddle reflecting the sky.
Learning to Say “No” (To Yourself)
We talk a lot about saying “no” to other people—to the extra project at work or the social event we don’t want to attend. But the hardest person to say “no” to is often yourself. I’m the worst at this. I’ll be exhausted, my eyes stinging from looking at a screen all day, and my brain will say, “You should really research how to fix that leaky faucet right now.” Or, “You haven’t checked the news in three hours; you might be missing something.”
Saying “no” to that internal voice is a radical act of self-care. It’s telling yourself that your rest is more important than a minor home repair or a headline. It’s giving yourself permission to be “uninformed” or “unproductive” for a little while. The world won’t stop spinning if you don’t check your notifications. The faucet will still be there tomorrow.
I’ve started setting “power down” times. Not in a strict, drill-sergeant way, but just as a gentle reminder. Around 8:00 PM, I try to put the phone in a drawer. If I don’t, I’ll find myself scrolling through videos of people cleaning their pools at 11:30 PM, wondering where the night went. When the phone is away, the world gets a lot smaller, and a lot quieter. It’s a bit uncomfortable at first, that silence. But eventually, your brain starts to settle down, like a child who finally stops throwing a tantrum and falls asleep.
The Quiet Life Isn’t Lazy
There’s this fear, I think, that if we slow down, we’ll become lazy. We’ll lose our edge. We’ll fall behind. But I’ve found the opposite to be true. When I allow myself to rest—truly rest, without the guilt—I actually have more energy for the things that matter. I’m more present with my family. I’m more creative in my work. I’m less irritable (usually).
Rest isn’t the absence of work; it’s the preparation for it. But more than that, rest is a right. You don’t have to “earn” your seat on the porch. You don’t have to justify your existence with a list of accomplishments. You’re allowed to just be here, taking up space and breathing the air.
It’s a slow process, unlearning all this pressure. I still catch myself checking my watch when I’m supposed to be relaxing. I still feel that twinge of guilt when the house is messy and I’m sitting on the couch. But I’m getting better at ignoring it. I’m getting better at choosing the “boring” Sunday over the “productive” one.
So, if you’re reading this and you’re feeling that itch—that feeling that you should be doing something “better” with your time—just take a breath. Maybe put the phone down for a minute. Look out the window. Notice the way the light is hitting the floor. It’s okay to do nothing. In fact, it might be the most important thing you do all day.
Anyway, that’s just what’s been on my mind lately. I think I’m going to go back to my rusty chair on the porch and see if I can make it to thirty minutes this time. No goals, no plans. Just the sun and the concrete. And maybe, if I’m lucky, absolutely nothing will happen.