Doing Nothing is Still Something

I have pondered the phrase ‘doing nothing’ for a long time. People are always doing something. Even if that means that you’re just sitting in a chair thinking, then you’re sitting in a chair thinking, not doing nothing. If you’re watching Netflix, then that is something that you are doing. I spend a lot of my time ‘doing nothing,’ but I don’t think of it that way. Society thinks that relaxation should not be counted as a good use of time but I disagree. Relaxation is essential to having a healthy brain. If you spent all of your time doing things and work then you would probably explode.

I don't think it is possible to actually be ‘doing nothing.’ I tried to think of how it could be possible and the closest I could come was floating in space not moving, but then wouldn’t you still be floating? Even if you found something to do where you were doing nothing, you would still be breathing and your heart would still be beating. I’m not sure if I should count this as something you are doing because it is involuntary so you aren’t really doing it, but your body is so does that count?

Now that I think about it, thinking is doing something. While I am writing this essay, I am thinking really hard about if thinking is doing nothing and I realized in that process that it is definitely doing something. My brain is working really hard and is tired, which is the same as running and making your body tired. You could argue that if I wasn’t typing on my computer right now, then I would be doing nothing but I think that me thinking about doing nothing is something that I am doing and I am also sitting in a chair which is doing something.

I decided to research if it was possible to ‘do nothing’ and I found out that it is actually a hot debate. An argument that I found is that it is mentally impossible to be doing nothing even for an instance because your mind is always thinking. Even if you try to think about nothing, then you will be actively trying to make your brain think about nothing which is still doing something.

If you are in a coma, are you doing nothing? I’ve never been in a coma so I don’t know what your brain would be thinking about, but I think that this is the closest you can come to doing nothing. If you don't count your body involuntarily working as doing something, then being in a coma could be considered doing nothing. The argument against this is that you are not actively involved in laying down when you’re in a coma, you probably aren’t aware of it at all. Does it count as you doing something if you aren’t voluntarily aware that you are laying down? This is where it gets complicated.

I conclude that ‘doing nothing’ is not a good use of your time because you shouldn’t try to be in a coma and being in a coma is probably not the best use of your time. If you have any thoughts on the ‘doing nothing’ debate, I would love to hear them because this is something that I would really like to figure out.

Here is a link to an interesting debate on the topic: http://www.debate.org/debates/It-is-physically-possible-to-do-nothing./1/