The Art of Doing Very Little

For the evenings when you do not want to achieve anything, improve anything or make particularly good use of your time

I think a lot of us have become very good at filling time. If there is a spare hour, we can usually find something to do with it because there is always a cupboard that could be sorted, something that needs ordered, a message that could be answered or one of those vague household jobs that becomes mysteriously urgent the second you sit down.

Even rest can end up with a job description. Have a bath. Read a book. Journal. Stretch. Meditate. Put your phone away. Light a candle. Drink something involving herbs and make the whole evening look calm and intentional.

All perfectly nice things, if you fancy them. Sometimes, though, I would quite like to sit down and achieve absolutely nothing. There is a very good case for that too.

NOT EVERYTHING HAS TO LEAD SOMEWHERE

We have become very fond of attaching an outcome to things. If you go for a walk, it counts towards your steps. If you read, there is a reading goal. Hobbies come with progress photographs, streaks, levels and equipment upgrades. Cooking can become meal preparation, exercise needs tracked and even sleep comes with a score the following morning.

There is nothing wrong with any of this, but it does mean that very few activities are allowed to remain completely pointless. I rather like pointless things - I could put something quite cheeky in here and say I married one but seems a bit harsh!

Watching an old programme because it is on. Pottering around the house without completing anything. Looking through photographs. Making tea and somehow taking fifteen minutes to drink it. Sitting outside for a while without turning it into a walk.

None of these will noticeably improve you as a person.

Excellent. That may be exactly why they belong in an evening.

LOW EFFORT IS NOT THE SAME AS WASTED TIME

There has been research looking at what people do after work and whether certain types of leisure are particularly good for recovery. The irritating answer for anyone hoping to develop the perfect evening formula is that there does not appear to be one magic activity.

In one small study comparing extra work, active leisure and quieter leisure at home, the activity itself seemed to matter less than how demanding the whole day and evening had been and whether people were satisfied with what they chose to do. Evenings involving less mental effort were also linked with better self-reported sleep and recovery.

I rather like that conclusion because it leaves room for personal taste.

Watching television does not automatically need replacing with reading because reading appears more worthwhile. Knitting does not become superior because somebody has called it mindful. A documentary is not morally better than a terrible reality programme.

If The Real Housewives requires considerably less from me than learning Italian, I know which one stands a better chance on a Tuesday night. There are plenty of times when challenging ourselves is useful. Seven forty-five in the evening does not always need to be one of them.

THE HOUSE WILL NEVER BE FINISHED

This is perhaps the greatest obstacle to doing very little. You sit down and immediately notice everything you could still be doing. The kitchen could be tidier. The washing could go on. Something upstairs needs brought downstairs, while something downstairs has apparently been waiting all day to go upstairs. There is probably a drawer somewhere quietly becoming disorganised.

That seems to be how houses keep us humble. Arseholes.

The trouble is that domestic life has no natural finishing point. There will always be another cup, another load of washing, another surface and another thing that you could technically do before sitting down.

If rest only begins when everything is finished, some of us are going to be waiting a very long time. At some point you have to decide that enough has happened for one day. That does not mean abandoning the house to ruin or pretending responsibilities do not exist. It means accepting that you are allowed to stop before the world has reached a state of absolute completion.

Most of it will still be there tomorrow. Annoyingly.

REST DOES NOT HAVE TO LOOK LIKE REST

I enjoy looking at beautiful evening photographs as much as anyone. Low lamps. Perfectly rumpled blankets. A lovely mug beside an open book. A candle burning somewhere safely out of shot while somebody enjoys a life entirely free from laundry baskets.

It looks wonderful. It can also make relaxing start to resemble something else we ought to be better at. Real evenings are often less photogenic. The room may need tidied. The mug might have a chip in it. You might be wearing old pyjamas and watching something you would never admit to choosing if somebody asked for a recommendation.

My bedside table alone would disqualify me from most slow-living content. None of that changes whether the time is restorative. An evening does not become more restful because it has been arranged nicely enough to photograph.

Sometimes the best indication that you have stopped performing for the day is that you no longer particularly care what any of it looks like.

BOREDOM HAS BECOME QUITE DIFFICULT TO COME BY

We rarely have to be bored anymore. There is almost always something within reach that can fill five minutes, and normally it is our phone.

I am not anti-phone and have no intention of pretending that I regularly spend my evenings gazing philosophically through a window. I am as capable as anyone of opening my phone to check one thing and resurfacing much later with detailed knowledge of an argument involving people I have never met.

You do not have to immediately fill the time between finishing one thing and starting another. You can make a drink without taking your phone with you. Sit somewhere for ten minutes. Stare into space. Wander around the house.

Your thoughts may do absolutely nothing useful during this period. You may remember somebody you went to primary school with, wonder whatever happened to the people who lived three doors down or suddenly realise that you never replied to somebody in 2019.

Leave it. Not every thought requires a note, a journal entry or personal growth. Sometimes your brain is allowed to ramble.

YOU CAN STOP WITHOUT EARNING IT

I think this may be the harder part.

There is often an unspoken idea that rest belongs on the other side of achievement. Once the work is finished, the kitchen is clean, the messages are answered and everything useful has been squeezed out of the day, then you can stop.

Except there is nearly always something else.

If you wait until you have unquestionably earned the right to sit down, you can become remarkably inventive about finding reasons why you have not earned it yet.

I do not think an evening needs that transaction. You have reached the end of your useful enthusiasm for the day and that can be enough.

There doesn’t need to be a dramatic level of exhaustion or a completed list to justify spending half an hour doing something with no measurable benefit whatsoever.

VERY LITTLE CAN BE QUITE ENOUGH

Doing very little does not need to become another technique either. I am not suggesting that everyone schedules twenty minutes of mandatory nothingness at 8 p.m. and starts tracking the results. That would rather spoil it. I mean allowing some evenings to remain ordinary.

Watch the programme. Make the tea. Sit on the sofa. Eat the crisps. Read four pages and abandon the book. Spend too long looking out of the window because something outside caught your attention.

Leave something undone, none of it needs to improve you.

After a day containing work, conversations, decisions, traffic, noise, messages, family, errands and all the other things involved in being a person, an evening that asks very little is not necessarily an evening wasted.

Sometimes very little is plenty.

Fortunately, I have quite a natural talent for it.