The Value of “Do Nothing” Time
Raymond Chandler, author of books such as The Big Sleep, The Long Goodbye, and Farewell, My Lovely, had an unbreakable rule.
He always followed it, and it always worked.
He became a writer when he was laid off during the Great Depression.
Getting a job in those days was a challenge for young men.
Chandler was 44, and in the 1930s, that was old; really old.
The average life expectancy for men at that time was 59.
Writer’s block
You’ve probably heard of a phenomenon called “writer’s block.”
It’s the proverbial, “I’m looking at a blank screen – a white piece of paper in my typewriter, in Chandler’s day – and I don’t know what to say.”
“I don’t know what to write.”
Maybe you’re a blogger, and you’ve been looking forward to having this time to write; and now that you’re here, you’re mind is a complete blank.
Maybe you have your favorite coffee.
The sun is shining.
The dog is lying comfortably nearby.
The kids are in school.
It’s so quiet you could hear a pin drop.
This is the moment you’ve been waiting for, and now you can’t hear any thoughts in your head because they’re aren’t any.
That’s a problem because the one thing that you, like all writers must do more than anything else is to write.
Words pay bills, put kids through college, and give you a comfortable retirement.
The life of a writer
A lot of people seem to think that the life of a writer must be one of the most leisurely occupations on the face of the earth.
To be able to take a pen and paper, or a laptop if you must, stroll down to the beach after spending two hours lingering over lattes and reading the newspaper, and then lazing in a deck chair while waiting for the muse to reveal herself, seems idyllic to the average person.
It would be idyllic to a writer, too, if it was true.
But it isn’t.
Like everyone else, writers have to show up for work every day, and they have to work.
Make no mistake: however enjoyable writing is, it’s still work, and it has to be treated as such.
A lesson
Now I realize that you’re probably not a professional writer; but there’s a lesson here for you.
That lesson is so important that if you fail to learn it, then you’ll never accomplish anything significant.
You’ll mosey through life as you have for the past months and years.
You’ll put in your time and retire, and the most that you’ll ever be able to say about what you do with your free time was to pursue a hobby.
Maybe you thought about turning it into an online or offline business, but it never amounted to anything more than a flutter; something that interested you for a little while, but the fell by the wayside when something else attracted your interest.
The lesson I want you to get is that it’s not enough to show up for work.
Showing up is a given.
It’s assumed.
It’s common sense.
What you have to do when you show up is to work; and that’s what Chandler realized.
He knew that he had to write, and that’s what led him to create what he called “do-nothing” time.
Do-nothing time
In the morning, he would go to his writing place with only his writing materials with him.
(It didn’t matter what his tools were. Nowadays, you may use only a computer, or pen and paper as well.)
He didn’t take anything else with him.
Nothing.
Zip.
Nada.
Then he had two choices.
He knew that he’d be in that room for a fixed period of time.
It was his writing time, and he needed to spend a certain amount of each day in that room doing his work.
His first choice was to write.
Seems pretty straightforward.
You’re a writer, and every day you go into your writing space and write.
Not too difficult to understand that.
His second choice, however, was a stroke of genius.
His second choice was to do nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing at all.
His job was to write, and if he couldn’t think of anything to say, then he sat there for the entire time regardless; but he didn’t do anything else.
He didn’t spend his time on some other activity.
Instead he sat there and stared at the blank page, and eventually – without fail – he would start to write.
And that’s what you need to do.
The Hack
When you get to your workplace, wherever it is, you need to do whatever it takes to do your work for whatever time you’ve set aside to do it.
That means no email or Facebook, or Pinterest.
Unless what you are working on right then includes those platforms, you stay out of them.
No walking the dog.
No making copious cups of coffee, or looking out of the window, or any of the other things that cause you to put off what you know you need to be doing.
When you get to your desk, you need to either work on what you intended to, or sit there and do nothing.
If you do that, then – just like Chandler – you’ll find that your brain will finally kick in and tell you what to do next.
But it will only do so if you shut off the external stimuli.
That is something that only you can do.