Why Doing Nothing Feels Wrong

On a recent coaching call, one of my clients said that doing nothing feels dangerous. A few weeks before, another client, going through something completely different, said, “I just don’t know why doing nothing feels wrong.”

This got me thinking about what it actually means to do nothing. You could be lying in bed staring at the ceiling, reading a book, or binge-watching a show you’ve seen six times. Hanging out at home, trying on some of your old clothes, or going for a walk... these are still activities. We’re hardly ever doing nothing.

In 2024, I left my corporate job, and it was the first time in two decades that I was without a desk and a computer that I had to be in front of every morning. For those first months, I had to convince myself that even though my life was not organized around employment anymore, it didn’t necessarily mean that my life was empty of activity.

I was still doing the things that I wanted to do, like traveling and getting lost in the stationery aisle at a Target in the early afternoons with a sweaty iced brown sugar shaken espresso in hand. I was doing things that were necessary for living, like exercising and washing our bedsheets. Things that made my life enjoyable, like playing Cards Against Humanity with my friends and trying out a from-scratch herb butter recipe with my husband. But somehow, because I wasn’t employed, it felt like those things didn’t count, and a lot of leisure guilt came with it.

Leisure guilt is what researchers call the feeling of guilt or uneasiness that comes with spending time on leisure rather than productive activities. Surprising no one, leisure guilt is more common among women, young adults, and people with lower incomes.

In one study, people who were more likely to experience leisure guilt also reported getting fewer benefits from their leisure time, which suggests that we’re not only struggling to give ourselves permission to chill, we’re also struggling to enjoy the rest and relaxation because of the guilt.

We can be sitting in the kitchen, enjoying the afternoon light splashing through the window while cleaning out our camera roll and snacking. But there’s a pile of laundry that needs to be done, boxes that need to be broken down for recycling, and a few phone calls and emails that need to be returned. So for the time being, we are considering ourselves to be doing nothing. We’ve basically decided what counts as doing something and what counts as doing nothing. What is a waste of time and what is a good use of time.

I think the lack of safety and security that comes from doing nothing shows up often in my coaching sessions because doing nothing can feel like we’re coming to a screeching halt. I remember a client saying that if they were to stop and do nothing, then they would probably have nothing. Or that they would fall behind and not know where or how to restart.

There’s a difference between feeling unproductive and feeling unsafe when it comes to doing nothing. One is feeling like you’re not accomplishing anything. The other is feeling like something bad might happen if you simply stop. For people who genuinely cannot afford to stop working, that fear makes sense.

Then, there is also the collective fear of being seen not doing anything. It is similar to the fear of being seen trying.

There’s a fear of being seen taking a break, not participating, not producing, and basically not getting after it like your peers all seem to be doing. It’s the fear of being asked what you did over the weekend and feeling like you need something to show for it. Or the fear of someday being asked to explain the one-year gap in your résumé during a job interview. Because if you weren’t on the clock for a year, then where the hell were you?!

Earlier in this essay I told you about a time when doing “nothing” felt uncomfortable for me, so it’s only right I also tell you about a time when I was actually doing nothing and how good it felt.

This past summer, I spent ten days at a Vipassana retreat tucked in the mountains of Kyoto, Japan, with no phone, books, music, journal, or TV. I remember feeling really giddy that I had nothing to do and nowhere to be. My phone was off, locked away somewhere, and everyone who needed to know why did. The most surprising thing was noticing how excited I was about all of the small talk and socializing I didn’t have to do with the other 40 people who also attended, since talking was not allowed. It was really hard, but it felt damn good. (If you’re curious about Vipassana, I wrote extensively about it here.)

There are real benefits to doing nothing. Giving ourselves time away from all the things that demand our attention allows us to rest and recover. A form of self-care, if you will.

Now, I want to make it clear that we are not practicing getting better at doing nothing so that we can become more productive afterwards. That would go against everything we’re talking about here. Rest and leisure have real psychological benefits, but they don’t need to produce some remarkable result to deserve a place in our lives.

So how do we practice doing nothing and not feel guilty about it? Schedule it!

Because of the ten-day silent meditation experience in Japan, I know that the most feel-good way to do nothing is to schedule it. When you actively plan to do nothing, you can put aside the manager in you that constantly demands that you produce and be seen doing it.

Don’t overplan your leisure time, though. A study did find that scheduling our chill time too strictly (for example, “I’m going to rest from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m., and then I’m going to go for a walk at 7 p.m.”) can make it feel more like work and take the joy out of it. Saying, “On Saturday, I’m going to take the day off and I’ll decide what I want to do that day,” is better. Loosely scheduling leisure time is what allows us to enjoy it.

So when my clients tell me that they can’t slow down or that doing nothing feels wrong or uncomfortable, I know exactly what they mean. Doing nothing isn’t easy, especially when we’ve spent so much of our lives doing anything but nothing.

Try to carve out a do-nothing day, and remember that it might feel awkward or wrong at first to allow yourself, and your brain, to just be. Whatever you do, don’t resist it. Like anything else, the more we practice accepting the very necessary isness of nothing, the more we’ll start to see how essential it is to have space to think, to create, to doze off to sleep, or to simply enjoy our couch with a nice cuppa and something good on TV.

The science behind this essay comes from Hyunjin J. Koo and colleagues’ 2026 study of leisure guilt in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin; Gabriela N. Tonietto, Selin A. Malkoc, Rebecca Walker Reczek and Michael I. Norton’s 2021 study showing that viewing leisure as wasteful undermines enjoyment; and Tonietto and Malkoc’s 2016 study on how scheduling takes the fun out of leisure.