I’m sitting at my desk right now, looking at a half-eaten piece of toast and a cup of coffee that has gone completely cold. For the third time this morning, I’ve realized that I haven’t actually done anything substantial. I’ve checked my email six times. I’ve scrolled through a news feed that only made me feel slightly more anxious than I was ten minutes ago. I’ve shuffled some papers around to make it look like I’m “organizing.”
It’s that weird, frantic energy we all carry around these days. It’s like we’re all vibrating at a frequency that’s just a little too high, constantly looking for the next thing to react to. We call it being productive. We call it staying on top of things. But if I’m being honest with myself—and maybe you can relate—it feels a lot more like drowning in shallow water.
I’ve spent a lot of years thinking that the busier I was, the more I mattered. If my calendar was a solid block of color, I was winning. If I was tired at the end of the day, it meant I’d earned my rest. But lately, I’ve been questioning that. I’ve been wondering why we’re so afraid of an empty afternoon or a quiet room. We’ve turned “busy” into a personality trait, and it’s exhausting us.
The False Comfort of the To-Do List
There is a certain hit of dopamine that comes with crossing something off a list. I love it. You probably love it too. There’s something so satisfying about that little ink line through a chore. But I’ve started to notice a pattern in my own life: I’ll spend all day crossing off tiny, insignificant tasks just so I can feel like I’m moving. I’ll reply to a dozen “quick” messages, reorganize my bookshelf, or research something I don’t actually need to buy.
At the end of the day, the list is done, but the big, scary, meaningful stuff? It hasn’t moved an inch. We use busyness as a shield. It protects us from the discomfort of doing the work that actually requires our full hearts and minds. It’s much easier to be “busy” with distractions than it is to sit down and face a project that might actually fail, or a thought that might actually be uncomfortable.
I think we’re addicted to the motion. We’ve convinced ourselves that as long as we’re moving, we’re making progress. But you can run on a treadmill for hours and still be in the same room. Real progress usually looks a lot slower, a lot quieter, and frankly, a lot more boring than we want to admit.
The High Cost of Living in the Shallows
Have you ever tried to read a book while someone is constantly tapping you on the shoulder? That’s what modern life feels like. Every notification, every “urgent” request, every “hey, did you see this?” is a tap on the shoulder. And the problem is, we’ve started tapping ourselves on the shoulder, too.
This constant switching—this jumping from one thought to another—is expensive. Not in money, but in mental energy. They call it “context switching,” but I just call it “brain fog.” It takes time for your mind to settle into a task. It takes time to find a rhythm. When we break that rhythm every five minutes, we never actually get deep enough to do our best work or have our best thoughts.
I remember trying to have a deep conversation with a friend a few weeks ago. Both of our phones were on the table. Every time one of them lit up, the energy in the room shifted. We weren’t even looking at them, but we knew they were there, waiting to demand something from us. It felt like there were four people in the conversation instead of two. We’ve lost the ability to be fully in one place at one time, and I think our relationships are starting to feel the strain of that just as much as our work is.
Why We’re So Afraid of Doing Nothing
I’ve been trying this thing lately where I just sit on my porch for ten minutes without my phone. No podcast, no book, no agenda. Just sitting. And let me tell you, the first three minutes are excruciating. My brain starts screaming at me. You should be checking the mail. You forgot to buy milk. You should probably look up that thing you were wondering about.
It’s uncomfortable because when the noise stops, you’re left with yourself. You’re left with the thoughts you’ve been pushing down with all that busyness. Maybe you’re unhappy with your job. Maybe you’re lonely. Maybe you’re just bored. But we’ve become so conditioned to avoid boredom at all costs that we’ve forgotten it’s actually the place where creativity is born.
If you never let your mind wander, it’s never going to find anything new. If you’re always filling the gaps with “content,” you’re never going to have an original thought of your own. We’re over-stimulated and under-reflected. We’re consuming everyone else’s ideas because we’re too busy to cultivate our own.
Small Ways to Reclaim the Quiet
- The Phone-Free Morning: I try (and often fail, let’s be real) to not touch my phone for the first thirty minutes of the day. No news, no messages. Just waking up. It changes the entire tone of the morning from “reactive” to “intentional.”
- One Thing at a Time: It sounds so simple it’s almost stupid, but try just doing one thing. If you’re eating, just eat. If you’re walking the dog, just walk the dog. Stop trying to optimize every second with a podcast or a phone call.
- The “No” Muscle: We say yes to things because we don’t want to disappoint people, but every “yes” to something you don’t care about is a “no” to something you do. Start saying no more often. It’s okay if people think you’re unavailable.
The Beauty of the Slow Build
Everything meaningful in my life has taken a long time. My best friendships took years to solidify. Learning to write took a decade of being terrible at it. Even the sourdough starter I’ve been messing with in the kitchen takes its own sweet time. You can’t rush it. If you try to speed up the fermentation, you just end up with bad bread.
We’re living in a world that values “fast,” but the things that actually matter are almost always “slow.” We want the results now, but we don’t want the process. We want the fit body without the months of boring workouts. We want the deep connection without the hours of mundane conversation. We want the career success without the years of quiet effort.
But there’s a quiet joy in the slow build. There’s a satisfaction in doing something well rather than just doing it quickly. When you stop rushing, you start noticing the details. You start seeing the texture of your life rather than just the blur of it passing by. I’d rather have three things done beautifully than twenty things done halfway.
Learning to Trust the Lulls
Nature doesn’t bloom all year round. There are seasons of growth, and there are seasons of dormancy. But for some reason, we expect ourselves to be in a permanent state of mid-summer. We think if we aren’t producing, we’re failing. But the winter is just as important as the spring. The lulls in our lives—the quiet periods where it feels like nothing is happening—are often when the most important growth is happening beneath the surface.
I’ve had to learn to trust those lulls. I’ve had to learn that it’s okay to have a week where I don’t have any big ideas. It’s okay to have a day where I just putter around the garden and think about nothing in particular. That isn’t wasted time. It’s recovery. It’s the ground resting so it can grow something else later.
If you’re feeling burnt out or just plain tired, maybe the answer isn’t a new productivity system or a better calendar app. Maybe the answer is just… less. Less input. Less noise. Less trying to prove that you’re busy. It takes a lot of courage to be the person who isn’t constantly “on,” but I’m starting to think it’s the only way to stay sane.
So, Where Do We Go From Here?
I’m not suggesting we all move to a cabin in the woods and throw our laptops in a lake (though some days, the idea is tempting). We have responsibilities. We have jobs and families and bills. We can’t just opt out of the world. But we can change how we move through it.
It’s about making small, intentional choices to protect our focus and our peace. It’s about realizing that “busy” is not a badge of honor, and “productive” doesn’t mean “constantly working.” It’s about giving ourselves permission to be human—to be slow, to be quiet, and to be occasionally, wonderfully unproductive.
Tonight, I’m going to leave my phone in the other room. I’m going to finish that cold coffee (or maybe just pour it out and start over), and I’m going to sit with my thoughts for a bit. It’ll probably be uncomfortable at first. I’ll probably feel that familiar itch to check something, to do something, to be “useful.” But I’m going to stay there anyway. Because the quiet isn’t the enemy. It’s the place where I finally get to hear myself think.
And honestly? I think that’s more than enough for one day.