The Art of Not Doing the Thing
Present Principle: On the science of niksen and the trap of productive rest
I write a lot about doing the Thing. Starting it, focusing on it, shipping it. So this might sound strange coming from me.
I’m good at working. I’m good at getting into Flow State. Maybe sometimes a bit too good. I can lose a whole day to building, and still want to do it all over again tomorrow. What I’m bad at is stopping. On a Sunday, with the laptop closed, there’s a low hum of guilt. Like I’m falling behind. Like I’m somehow still not doing enough. It feels cringe to admit. And above all, it’s dangerous.
We live inside a culture that treats everything as a chance to optimise, to make progress, to squeeze out a little more. Rest gets framed as the reward you earn after the work, if you earn it at all. Doing nothing feels lazy. It feels like a small failure. Admittedly, that’s a pretty old school way to see life.
Rest is not the opposite of doing the Thing. It’s a crucial part of it.
This is embarrassing to admit, but I recently needed a book to really understand that again. I read The Brain at Rest by neuroscientist Joseph Jebelli, and it put hard science under something I’d only felt.
When you’re doing nothing, your brain doesn’t switch off. A quieter system takes over. Neuroscientists call it the Default Mode Network, first described by Marcus Raichle in 2001, and it switches on precisely when you're not busy. It’s the part of the brain that quietly connects ideas. The moment you stop working on a problem is often the moment your brain starts solving it in the background.
Which explains something we all know. My brain almost never makes its best connections at the desk. Great ideas come in the shower. On a walk through Paris with no destination. On a run in the parc. Classic Eureka! spots. But it’s not magic. It’s just my brain finally getting the space to connect things, because for once I’m not filling it every second.
And not all rest counts the same. I love watching random stuff on YouTube, or a great show (or a stupid show) and this feels like rest, but it often isn’t really. A screen still demands your attention, it keeps the busy part of your brain switched on. The rest that works is the kind that feels almost like nothing. A nap. Just staring out the window. Watching the street go by from a café. The Dutch even have a word for it: niksen, the art of doing nothing on purpose.
Do the Thing, or do nothing
Naval Ravikant puts it another way. Don’t work like a cow, grazing the same field all day. Work like a lion. Lions rest most of the time, then sprint with everything they have, and then rest again. Full effort, then full rest. Nothing half-hearted in between.
And the in-between is a real problem. Some days I don’t really choose between working and resting at all. I do a third thing. I stay busy. I answer emails, I tidy my notes, I knock out ten small urgent-feeling tasks that aren’t the real work and aren’t rest either. It feels productive. It’s really just Resistance, the part of me that wants to avoid both the hard work and the real stillness.
Neil Gaiman has a rule I love. When he sits down to write, he gives himself two options, and only two. He can write, or he can do nothing at all. No phone, no busywork, nothing. Bored enough for long enough, the writing usually wins. I think that rule is really about honesty. Do the Thing, or do nothing. Both are real. Everything in between is just busyness disguised as productivity.
But I want to be careful here.
If I tell you to rest so you can be more productive, I’ve just smuggled hustle culture back in. Rest as a performance enhancer. Sleep so you can grind harder. That’s not what I mean, and it’s not what PRESENT is about.
PRESENT is about presence, not productivity. And presence includes stillness. You’re a human being, not a machine that feels guilty for sitting still. Rest is part of a life worth living. You don’t earn it by suffering first.
So this is your permission, if you needed one. Close the laptop. Take the walk without the podcast at double speed. Go to the park in the middle of the day. Do the gloriously unproductive thing. Not to recharge for the next sprint, but because rest is yours, and you’re allowed to have it.
Your Thing will still be there tomorrow. You’ll meet it with more presence when you’re rested.
This is part of the upcoming framework and book I’m writing to help as many people as possible. It’s called Stop Postponing Yourself: Do The Thing. A Modern Maker Manifesto and is now available for pre-ordering. There are still a few spots left for the Early Bird Offer.
If you want to join a supportive group of 264 makers from all around the world, check out our Present Space. We are meeting in the Consistency Club every two weeks to talk about the bliss and struggles of getting closer to our Favorite Unrealized Projects.