Don’t Just Do Something, Sit There
The Power of Doing “Nothing”

The 5 AM Miracle Podcast, hosted by Jeff Sanders

Episode #515: "Don't Just Do Something, Sit There: The Power of Doing 'Nothing'"

I have a really hard time sitting still.

My normal state of being is in motion.

I stay active, drink coffee, check items off my to-do list, and move from one thing to the next to the next to the next.

However, that doesn't mean I'm doing this right.

There is immense power in doing quote-unquote "nothing" or what we think of as "nothing."

This is the 5 a.m. miracle, episode number 515.

Don't just do something.

Sit there.

The power of doing nothing.

Good morning and welcome to the 5 a.m. miracle.

This episode this week, it's a little bit different.

It's not the usual bounce out of bed with enthusiasm energy.

This episode is purposeful.

We need a break sometimes.

We need to learn how to just sit there.

So in this episode, I'm gonna break down why always being in motion is a strategy doomed to fail.

Why so many of us fail to realize the value in taking an intentional break to do very little.

And how to change your default rhythm to one that encourages incredible productivity followed by an incredibly regenerating pause.

Let's get to that.

Now I want to try something a bit unusual.

For the next two minutes, I'm not gonna say anything.

I want you to just sit there.

Still your body, still your mind.

Just be.

Two minutes.

Let's begin. [silence] [silence] [silence] [silence] [music] Welcome back.

How'd that go?

It was a long two minutes for me.

In case you're wondering, I just sat here for the last two minutes watching the clock.

And it's amazing how long that feels.

I have an amazing inability to appreciate the value of time.

And doing something as simple as that, sitting in silence for two minutes, it has a powerful impact.

You know, did your high achiever brain kind of freak out like mine did?

I mean, that's in a way how this is supposed to work.

We need to struggle in that sense, to highlight the opportunity for growth.

So let's talk about why this kind of break is so helpful, and how you can have more of these kinds of breaks on purpose, especially when you need them most.

So the concept of "don't just do something, sit there" comes from the opposite of that, "don't just sit there, do something."

Which you may have heard from your parents, your teachers, a coach, someone like me.

Someone who is encouraging you to get up and move, and to do something of value, and to do it now.

That basically is a voice that's in the back of my head 24/7.

It's always there in some form or another, pinging my brain to keep moving, to stay in motion.

It basically is a message that says, "don't just sit there, do something, and if you find yourself just sitting there, that's a big problem, you should freak out and go do anything at all."

Whether it's productive or not, motion is the default state.

Like that's the voice in my head arguing that motion is better than stillness.

Arguing that activity is more valuable than inactivity.

And for the most part, the voice is correct.

For the most part, life is in motion, we are always moving.

But it's not always the best choice.

So let's discuss these concepts a little more acutely.

Specifically this first one, this concept of constant motion.

It's not the answer, right?

This idea that we should just be choosing the next task, go to the next thing, move, move, move, go, go, go, all the time.

It's a pervasive, perfectionistic tendency.

It's a high achiever flaw.

It's this idea that if we're not doing that thing, we're failing.

That if we find ourselves just sitting there, that we are missing opportunities that come from doing something.

Which on its face value, of course, that's true.

It is.

If we're just sitting there, things aren't happening.

What we're missing is what actually is, which we're going to get to in just a second.

This idea that being in motion as a strategy, it's doomed to fail for a few key reasons.

The first of which, and this is probably one you've experienced yourself, it's exhausting.

Being in motion all the time, man, I'm getting tired just thinking about that.

That's not how I picture my life.

When I picture my best self in the future, Jeff Sanders 10 years from now, who's living life at a higher level, who has achieved great things, that's true, but who's experiencing life in a profoundly better way, I don't picture exhaustion.

I don't picture stress and burnout.

I don't picture my best self freaking out all the time about the next thing on my calendar or to-do list.

But I find myself there pretty frequently, today, in my life now.

So I'm not living my best life that I'm picturing.

So why not?

Why is stress and burnout and exhaustion part of my life today if I have the choice for it not to be?

Well, in large part, that's based on this false theory that I carry with me every day that constant movement is the answer.

That if I bury my head in the sand and I work and I stay focused and I move, move, move, that I am seizing opportunities.

But what I'm missing is the opportunity to strategize more intelligently, to use a pause intelligently, strategically, to let those calm two minutes of silence provide more value than 20 minutes of activity.

You know, life is about more than a checklist.

And as a guy who teaches people how to optimize their checklists, that's important, right?

I'm arguing against what I always argue, to a certain degree.

These things go hand in hand.

This is the yin and the yang, right?

These things all flow together.

But if you're always on one side, you're always getting the yin and there is no yang, right?

That's a problem.

And that's what we're trying to focus on and solve here.

So it's pretty obvious.

The constant motion, it is exhausting.

It is stressful.

Burnout is inevitable.

And if we're always in that state of affairs, we're going to miss something.

[Music] Now, the opposite is also true, which is that doing nothing for too long is also in and of itself a losing strategy.

If I find myself, let's say on vacation or an extended weekend or the holidays are a great example of this.

So at the time of this recording, we are entering into the holiday season.

And it's a season where I know from my own experience that historically, I will spend a good deal of time with family.

My whole family lives in the state of Missouri, United States.

And so we tend to go back to Missouri to spend a lot of time with them for weeks, usually when you combine Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year's and all these things.

We spend a lot of time there.

And it's a wonderful time with the family, but it's not my usual life, right?

It's different.

The habits are different.

The people are different.

Where I sleep is different.

My daily rhythms are different.

And for the most part, what that means is I'm doing less.

My checklist is still with me.

And sometimes I actually do work when I'm there.

But for the most part, it's very little, you know, technical work.

It's almost always just a very low-key, chill, social environment.

And that's healthy and necessary and fun.

I'm going to do it again this year and next year and every year after that.

My question is not about do I spend time with my family.

That's not the question.

The question is what is this really?

And what can it be if it could be better?

And what I find myself in a lot is I do the equivalent of what I call nothing, right?

I just don't do work.

I don't look at the checklist for a while.

I tend to sleep in.

I tend to overeat.

I tend to have just very bad personal health habits.

And all of that adds up to what I'm calling kind of the fallacy here of going too far on doing nothing.

Because doing nothing for too long is a losing strategy when it becomes the new norm.

You lose that momentum.

You get used to a feeling of underperforming.

You atrophy.

Your physical, your mental muscles, they break down.

You lose your edge.

The thing that makes you a high achiever in the first place, that thing fades.

Now, I'm going to argue in this episode that that's a good thing when it's intentional and it's done in a short, very controlled environment.

But it can go too far.

If you're like me and you might be an extremist, which I definitely am, then I'm either on or I'm off.

I'm either like full on, caffeinated, knocking things off my checklist and making things happen or man, I am checked out.

I am useless.

I am tired.

I'm on the couch.

I am not to be spoken to.

I'm just dead to the world.

And that's kind of who I become during the holidays.

That's kind of who I am when I'm doing literally nothing, just laying around in my life.

And so my goal with all of this is always to find a very healthy balance in this conversation, to figure out what does it mean for me to live like this in a healthy way.

If I do picture myself 10 years from now and I am living my best life and becoming my best self, well, it's going to include both the work element of achieving great things and striving for things I care about and a healthy balance of chilling out in a way that regenerates me, that is refreshing, that allows me to come back to the work later feeling better than when I stopped before the break.

If you return from a break and you're not ready yet, you don't feel fulfilled, refreshed, ready to go again, the break was probably not done properly.

There was probably a better set of activities and habits and systems and rhythm and flow that all could have prepared you to come back feeling good and healthy and rested and ready.

Honestly, that's what we're going for here.

If you imagine a weekend, you leave work on a Friday afternoon, you go home, you've got the two solid Saturday-Sunday days to do whatever it is you do in your home life, and you return back on Monday.

If on Monday morning you're exhausted or you're stressed, you're fearful, you have those feelings of, "Man, I'm not ready yet."

If Monday morning is a dreadful experience, that says a lot about where you are in life.

I've had those Mondays.

I know what that means.

And it's a difficult place to be because you usually very, very acutely understand where you are in this and you know that change is needed.

So my argument is that sometimes that change is due exactly the opposite of what we've been trying to do.

Because I can imagine someone in that scenario who on Friday afternoon, they go home and what do they do?

Nothing.

They watch football maybe, like I tend to do on the weekends.

They overeat.

They just kind of get blobby.

For lack of a better term, right?

We just get a blob out on the couch.

I'm not going to argue that's your life, but it can be mine sometimes.

And so if we find ourselves in those positions and then we return to work on Monday, that blobby feeling all weekend, that doesn't add up to a better Monday.

It just doesn't.

Now, the opposite has been my life recently, which is that I'm not blobby at all.

In fact, I am busier on Saturdays and Sundays than I am all week long because my kids are home.

They've got birthday parties to go to.

We've got music class to attend.

We've got, you know, family activities and outings and chores and laundry and blah, blah, blah.

Just the list goes on and on.

I'm super busy on my weekends.

It is just, it's a packed couple of days.

Well, guess what that adds up to?

A Monday morning where I'm not ready because I'm tired from the weekend.

The weekend exhausted me and now it's time to work on Monday and I'm not ready.

I didn't regenerate.

I didn't bring my best self to the weekend.

I just fell victim to busyness and activity and noise.

And that's not the answer either.

So we have this kind of back and forth, this ping pong effect of I don't want to be blobby on the couch.

I love this new word I made up.

This blobby feeling on the couch combined with I don't want to do the opposite and just overdo it.

Neither one is the answer.

So let's break this down to what is the best value we can imagine from an intentional pause, from a break that brings us our best self.

Now many of us fail to realize the value in doing little because we are addicted to those endorphins of activity, because we get in the habit of never stopping, because we fill our life every second of it with noise.

You know, your phone, TV, your task list, talking to other people.

We fill our life with stuff.

But just staying there, just to be there is valuable when it's done on purpose, because it allows you the chance to breathe.

It reduces your stress level.

It allows for creative energy to kick in for me almost immediately.

I also find peace in the middle of chaos.

When things are busy, I can slow my mind, slow my breath, bring the energy down to a healthy, controllable level before I re-engage, before I get myself back into the mess.

This is important.

This realization of when it's needed, that the value of the intentional pause oftentimes just come from the way that we bring ourself into it.

What led us to this moment?

Why are we here?

Why are we sitting still?

Oftentimes for me, it's because I have got to stop.

I have got to slow the pace, and I can feel the necessity of that pause, the necessity of that two minutes of silence, or 20 minutes, or two hours, or whatever the case may be.

The value of the pause is really predicated on what got you to that moment.

What role does it play in your life when it occurs?

Now, that's almost like an emergent response, right?

A traumatic response.

Bad things are happening.

Chaos is here.

I need a break, or I'm going to burn out.

That's different than an intentional recurring pause, a purposeful, pre-planned habit of saying, "I'm going to bake this into my life to pause on purpose to prevent those kinds of scenarios of stress and burnout."

The value of the pause is dependent on the value you bring to it.

And so oftentimes that means it's about the intentionality of saying, and the awareness of saying, "Here's where I am, and therefore here's what I need most."

And from my perspective, the high achievers that I work with are the types who, they will, in their brain, logically tell you, "Breaks are good.

They'll say the words.

It's good to take a break.

It's good to pause."

Vacations are nice, but in reality, they're not doing those things.

They're not taking those days off.

They're not pausing for the moments they need.

You know, the studies have shown that the companies who give their employees unlimited vacation time actually see the opposite, and their employees don't take nearly enough vacation at all.

American culture especially is one that is just baked in this overwork, constant motion mentality, and when you are given too much freedom to literally take as much time off as you need, people are scared to take any time off at all for fear of the repercussions that would bring.

And so they take no time off, they burn themselves out, and it's a traumatic train wreck ready to happen.

That's not the answer either.

So what does it look like?

From my perspective, the answer here is we change the default rhythm.

I've spoken before on this podcast about a concept I call crunch and release.

It is a concept that has in many ways dictated how I flow through my best weeks.

I don't always stick to it.

I'll be the first to tell you that I spend more time in the crunch than I do the release.

The crunch is the grind.

It's the work.

It's the focus.

It's the energy that's given towards your goals.

It's the achievement.

The crunch is the thing you are setting out to do.

It's productive.

It's phenomenal when done properly and in a controlled boundary set kind of time frame.

And it's very effective.

The release is the intentional opposite.

This is the work hard, play hard mentality.

This is where I really nailed this down in college.

I had a very clear focus.

That was my entire theme all four years of college, work hard, play hard.

And I did exactly that.

I would work super hard.

I would just put in incredible hours, intense focus.

I was very good at school.

I was a very good student.

But then I was a very bad student.

I would release too much.

I would work hard, yes, but then play hard so hard it was hard to come back to real life.

And yes, I'm referring to partying and drinking and being out forever and studying abroad in Prague for three months where I did incredible amounts of drugs and alcohol.

I've been there.

I know what it's like to live that in a sense the party lifestyle, but it's really that intense extremist lifestyle of I'm going to put in all that energy into the crunch and the work and the hours and then I desperately need to just like let all that stuff out by going completely nuts on the release.

So.

Fortunately, I'm not that extreme anymore.

My life doesn't look like that anymore.

I will acknowledge that that's that's still in me that the old 20 years ago.

Jeff Sanders is still here.

I should just watch a documentary on Netflix about Woodstock 99.

If you have not seen that I recommend it.

It's adults only documentary.

There is a bit of nudity, but what that documentary really highlights was this teenage angst this energy in the late 90s.

It's a very interesting documentary.

Actually, it really breaks down kind of a societal shift that was taking place and I was just a few years younger than the kids who are at this this Woodstock and so potentially I could have been there had it taken place a few years later and I kind of was because a few years later I was in college experiencing what these kids did during Woodstock 99.

What it really represented was a lot of teenage angst a lot of just this huge release of like I'm going to party hard and I'm going to burn this place to the ground.

And that's such an extreme example, but that's I think that's how we can feel.

If we've been putting ourselves through the ringer if the stress levels have been high, then we're going to need a release of some kind.

And so if it's a pre-planned healthy release if it's an intentional slowing of the systems in a way that brings about once again, the regenerative refreshing nature of your best self coming out the other side.

Well, then it's a healthy version of this not the destructive unhealthy one.

And I've seen both sides of my own life.

I know what that looks like.

I know what it feels like.

And so the goal here is to change your default rhythm to one that encourages productivity, but yes followed by a regenerative pause.

There's a lot of ways to approach this based upon your personal preference based upon what works for you.

I know for me that there are certain activities that always speak to me.

I mean just 24/7 if you ask me Jeff if you had to take a break at any point in your life and do something do you know what you would do?

Absolutely.

I would go to the woods.

That's my answer go for a hike go for a run go camping get me into nature.

I'm good.

That's where I find my happy place, right?

That's where my best self comes out.

It's where my most creativity comes from my most energy my most, you know, the majority my enthusiasm towards life my positivity.

It just flows from nature.

That's my answer.

You may have other ways to allow you to to bring about your best self.

Yes, you can go for a walk go for a hike meditation, even though that seems like that's what this whole episode is about.

I don't meditate I used to for a bit and I do find it effective, but I find it very difficult for me to do exactly what we did the top of the show that two-minute break we did earlier.

That was for me to remind me how much I need that and how much I don't do that.

That level of self-awareness is going to result in one of two things.

You're either going to continue down the path you're already on not doing the things that are good for you or at some point you're going to make a decision to change and meditation may be part of that it may not be but the point is there may be something you know, there's value here and I don't do it.

There is something that is the best choice for me and I continually don't do it.

Well, this is a chance to do that.

This is a chance to say yes.

So once again walk hike meditate do yoga guided relaxation.

I love going to the sauna and steam room.

That's become a really awesome place for me to find a place to sit and pause and I'll use as a great example because a sauna is a place where I have no phone with me.

It's a place I go without technology.

What I know right?

Holy cow.

You actually go somewhere without your phone.

Yes at 20 minutes.

That's it.

It's all I can handle right?

The addiction is real.

But really the sauna is a place where it's a walled-off quiet place where I can just sit and breathe and sweat and that's it.

Yes, I do have a waterproof notebook with me.

So if I get brilliant ideas, I write them down.

I have no ideas who cares.

I'm not there for the ideas.

I'm there for the intentional pause.

I'm there for the break.

I'm there for what all of this can add up to.

And so if you need a time like that, I don't want to you know, embarrass my dad here, but I was a kid.

My dad would take these time periods of his life.

Hope he enjoys this this story of him.

My dad years ago when I was a kid would spend time in the basement of our house with all the lights off listening to classical music.

And I remember thinking like what is he doing?

Like this is so weird.

I was like 10 years old and I'm like my dad's by himself in the dark listening to Mozart.

Like what is this?

Oftentimes wasn't even classical was like 70s rock.

It was like things he grew up with and when he was a teenager, right?

But he would listen to music.

He enjoyed in the dark lay on the couch.

And he was taking his time to relax to chill out to detach.

That was his moment.

That was his chance to not just do something sit there.

It was healthy.

I think to my best knowledge.

He's probably still does this.

I have no idea but he did it back then and I'm sure it was great and I have found myself doing things like that.

Now when I'm basically his age when I was a kid and I'm living through my dad's life now.

It's kind of weird in a lot of ways, but I see the need.

I see the need for that kind of release that kind of break of man life can be hard.

They can be exhausting mentally challenging physically exhausting and these kinds of regenerative sessions are so powerful.

So yes, it could come through music.

It could come through any number of things.

The point here is to embrace what it is and when the moment shows up.

Just sit there.

Now if you want to have a more active session, I stay more active in that meditation sense.

I will kind of rediscuss here the way that I have viewed meditation or these kinds of sessions over the years, which is through the Dan Harris method.

Dan Harris was the former ABC News anchor who had a pretty severe cocaine addiction and then wound up using meditation to help solve his drug addiction and find inner peace and he has been running the 10% happier podcast and book for many years now and his perspective on all of this is that meditation is in essence a mental bicep curl.

It is the opportunity for you to acknowledge what's going on the tension the problem the pain and then you let it go and then you acknowledge the next distracting thought and you let it go acknowledge let it go crunch and release crunch and release.

And the cool thing about this is that this is a skill.

It's a muscle you can grow over time this inability that I may have today to calm myself down appropriately.

I can improve it.

You can improve it.

If you want to get better at this if all of this sounds foreign to you, if it sounds hard if it sounds like not your natural state of being to slow the roll and calm down effectively you can get better at this.

That's the cool part about this.

I'll use the sauna as the best example because the average person who never uses a sauna who walks into a room.

That's a hundred and eighty degrees or hotter.

That's 180 Fahrenheit, right?

This is very hot room.

The average person who walks into this space will stay for like two or three minutes freak out and run.

I see it almost every day in my gym like there are newbies there every single day.

They walk in there like I can do this and like whoa, I can't do this and they run out which is good.

It's fine.

It's good to experience it.

But the guys and gals who have been around the sauna for a while.

They have built up a tolerance.

It's literally called the heat shock proteins.

Dr.

Rhonda Patrick, by the way, phenomenal person in this topic.

She will tell you that you will allow your body has these heat shock proteins that have a tolerance level for heat and they improve over time and the more that you're in the sauna the more your body can regulate your sweat and your breathing and your temperature so that instead of going for two minutes and then leaving you can go for 20 and then leave which is what I tend to do.

And so because of that I have built up this sense of this is my happy place.

This is my guarded area.

This is where I have the chance to do my mental bicep curls to improve that skill to get better over time to build up my ability to just sit there.

And that's the goal get good at this over time incorporate it more be proactive be intentional be pre-planning these sessions to prevent the biggest chaos and you can be your better self through this process.

I promise you this does work and it is necessary.

So let's try something unusual again.

I'm going to give you a second chance at this for the next two minutes.

I am once again not going to say anything and I want you to try this one more time to just sit there to still your body still your mind and just be use your mental bicep curls and improve your skill set.

Two minutes and we start now.

[BLANK_AUDIO] Welcome back once again.

How do you feel?

Better?

More relaxed?

More capable of slowing down?

You know one thing that happened to me during this last two minutes was someone texted me and on my computer I have the messaging app and the little red dot popped up and I stared at it for two minutes.

Just stared at this little notification pinging my brain just begging me to read it to look at it.

I didn't that was tough, but that's that's it right?

That's it right there.

That's the example like we are pinged.

We are distracted.

We are notified.

We are in that space and it's not the best choice.

It's not where we thrive.

Where we thrive is intentionality.

Where we thrive is peace.

Where we thrive is the refreshing regenerative nature of coming back to our work ready, excited, passionate, creative, innovative, just whole and at peace.

And that's possible, especially when things are tough.

It's not just possible.

It is outright necessary.

So for your action step this week, I want you to try doing nothing.

If you have to schedule it on your calendar, do so.

Sit and breathe.

That's it.

JeffSanders.com/515 is the place to go for the episode notes this week.

If you'd like to, you can subscribe to this podcast or follow, depending on the app you're using.

And that's all I've got for you here on the 5 AM Miracle Podcast this week.

Until next time, do nothing.