Nothing: Simply Do Nothing
Why do nothing?
Because it gives you a chance to think about what you _really_ must be doing instead of what you were doing that led to wanting to calm the mind by doing nothing.
And what were you doing that made the mind "empty calorie"-style busy?
Usually getting lost in youtube videos or social media doomscrolling.
That reminds me of a specific (de)motivational video of one of my favorite comedians Masood Boomgaard, which specifically covers the rat race that prevails in todays workplace culture. While it's meant to be funny, it actually touches some deeper philosophical truths.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8An2SxNFvmU [Do Nothing - a message of motivation from Self-help Singh- (un) motivational speaker and life coach]
And even when intentionally doing nothing, there is some obscure desire to measure how much nothing we are actually doing. Hence the idle counter.
I have had a page for just that for years now:
Neat! I've been reading How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell and enjoying it. It's a bit political for my liking but overall a good reminder to pause and set aside time to just "be" and shelve the programmed drive to constantly be productive as in economically productive. My therapist recently helped me reframe my drive for being productive as being generative, which I have taken a liking to since it encompasses being creative for the sake of enjoying the process with no other end - economic or otherwise.
I am torn about the page having a scrollbar. It would be nice to be able to read the entire page without having to scroll. But you can not guarantee that anyway as the browser window might be arbitrarily small. It punishes you for not doing nothing and wanting to read the text which is the point. So maybe the page should actually ensure that there is always a scroll bar, place the statistics always below the fold.
Looking at the source code, I have never seen so many files for such a simple HTML page.
> taking a step back from the relentless grind, and reconnecting with the world around you
The world does not want to connect with me. The world is in many subtle ways actively trying to kill me, harm me, and reduce me. If I'm taking time off it's for myself.
> rebellion against the incessant noise of modern life, which demands constant action.
So does my own body. Eventually I'm going to get hungry no matter how much nothing I do. Having stillness of mind allows purpose of action. You've got it all backwards.
This reminds me of "Don't Shoot the Puppy". https://www.addictinggames.com/funny/dont-shoot-the-puppy
> There's no reward for lingering, just the peculiar pleasure of simply being.
Reward: the numbers go up. Almost like idle clicker games, but without clicking.
There's a whole trend at the moment called 'raw dogging' (sigh) that means to do something like take a flight with no entertainment, books, phone turned off, etc. etc.
Breathing is something you can either do or not do, yet it's also something that happens automatically, such as during sleep or when you're not paying attention to it.
When done perfectly correctly, consciously breathing nets the same benefits to the body as unconscious or automatic breathing. You don't really have to spend any mental energy on it to get the oxygen you need (your body will even yawn for you if it needs more).
I think there is a way to find the ease and harmony in most things, or, the "automatic modes". You can design your life in such a way that you're essentially doing nothing, but to others you appear to be involved in everything.
I can only imagine what it would be like to stop paddling and see that I am still in motion, to be able to exhale and do nothing.
Along similar lines, I built Sit (https://sit.sonnet.io) a couple of years ago, and so far we’ve generated months of blissful un-productivity (my main metric).
(I use it as a meditation timer.)
For sitting and doing nothing as a group activity, I made Sit Together: https://untested.sonnet.io/Sit.%2C+(together)+devlog+002+–+S...
If you gamify doing nothing, is doing nothing actually the same as actively playing the game?
The non-action of the wise man is not inaction.
It is not studied. It is not shaken by anything.
The sage is quiet because he is not moved,
Not because he wills to be quiet.
I thought it would just be a satirical post, except there's an actual app and github repo with 20 commits.
Big respect to the dedication.
That’s a lot of text for nothing.
Loved this one.
Off Topic: Since it linked to GitHub. I clicked. Than my 1st thought was, "This must be a web learning project for the author." Otherwise this page could be made in 1 .html page instead of 50+ files present in the repository!
Missed the trick to detect lost window focus, which is easy to do when you are using multiple monitors and very much NOT doing nothing ;-)
Interestingly, http://www.donothingfor2minutes.com/ eventually morphed into Calm
It’s an excellent detail that the nothing timer resets if you scroll down to read the copy.
Okay, but I want to be able to compare how much "nothing" I'm doing with my friends and have "do nothing" influencer tools so I can monetize "doing nothing." I need to be able to sell flairs, let people pay for private one-on-one "do nothing" sessions, and promote products integral to my "do nothing" success like Mountain Dew and Taco Bell.
This page is a great example how we got of rails with a webpage. Its a very simple page, with a counter and some text. The files and js needed to make it run is insane.
Nice idea. We need a technology that doesn't just look at mouse movement to help you do nothing, but reads your brainwaves.
also covered by the great philosopher Bertrand Russell: https://harpers.org/archive/1932/10/in-praise-of-idleness/.
This is a great intro to meditation.
Meet people where they are, and make it as easy as possible to start doing something
I dont think "doing nothing" is enough - the mind, at least mine, will often wander into ugly places if left truly alone. What I think is needed is a conscious & repeated effort of sustaining attention away from past or future and back to here & now
Generally when I ride the MRT I unwind and just stare and chill. It helps that in a crowded train it's hard to fetch your phone from your pocket, even though everyone else does it. I think just by disposition I cannot physically stayed plugged in, otherwise I lose myself.
Brilliant. Reminds me of https://github.com/kelseyhightower/nocode but for general public.
Sometimes to get an idea of something you should simply stop thinking.
Could we get a leaderboard feature
I've enjoyed using Sit, which is similar in spirit:
What is is about this site? The style or whatever it is, is seemingly calming. Love it.
Joke's on you, I got depression and that counter only goes up to rookie numbers. /meme :)
Josef Pieper moment - good reminder to read "Leisure, the Basis of Culture" again.
you do nothing while I use your CPU to mine crypto. thanks
For more brain explosion, compound that with a "memento mori" timer that converts the time spend in "nothingness" into "how much closer you are to eternal nothingness."
No wonder people watch TV, fight wars, or build startups to forget that.
Really cool to remind people to do this but I also get a little sense of irony that to really do this, just walk away from the screen. Don't need an app to allow you to do nothing.
Not a put down at all, just that our strange little world has come to this.
Before clicking, I thought this was going to be the next step in the evolution of "frameworks" like http://vanilla-js.com/
This is good advice, actually. If you can't perform simple things, how can you do complex ones?
But this also borders on asceticism - the practice of letting go of worldly things, in pursuit of higher learning.
Sensory deprivation tanks are also great for this. No distractions or to-do's, just you and your thoughts for an hour.
It is hard for me to pinpoint what actually happened, but I felt happy just looking at the page for about a minute.
But what about the ten-thousand invisible habits? You could be engaged in furious activity right now and not even know it.
This is amazing, it amazes me how some people are able to take the simplest idea and put it out. Amazing, kudos
I lasted about 10 seconds before I gave into the irresistible urge to read the comments about this on HN.
The essence of stepping away from the relentless pace of modern life. But sometimes it is so hard to do nothing
Pinch-to-zoom on a MacBook touchpad did not trigger a reset of the idle timer.
I don't get it. What is the difference between this website and the rest of the internet?
It doesn't reset when I alt+tab
I was hoping that it would crash over the 900 seconds but it still worked.
What happens after 999?
I am a huge fan of meditation, I've been practicing it for over a decade. I would like to extend an invitation to those that are interested to pursue the concept of this applet further to find a proper teacher rooted in a tested tradition.
There's this movement to reintroduce millenial traditions of mindfulness into our lives under the guise of modern secularism. I am not convinced that removing its original context is as wise as it's purported. So many old traditions focus on lineage for a reason, and it is something we're too quick to do away with in society.
Most meditation practices come along with a warning, that doing this type of work can lead to results that you need proper preparation for. At the very least you need proper intentionality, and doing them incorrectly can lead to neuroticism and in some cases breakdowns and dissociation.
Good luck with all your nothings.
If you do, don't.
I can do that when I'm dead.
Buddhism, son!
I was expecting an xyzzy reference.
Intriguing. Perhaps adding focus gained detection with a timer reset would increase the motivation to do nothing.
"You don't need a million dollars to do nothin. Take a look at my cousin, he's broke don't do shit."
Meditation and "thinking about nothing" are glamorized self-centeredness. Try thinking about "nothing" and you'll come to realize that you are just thinking about yourself, your feelings, your anxiety (and attempts to alleviate it), your need to escape from others, etc.
What brought you to meditation in the first place? Stress, anxiety, resentment, insecurity. Instead of reconciliation, meditation brings more isolation and brooding.
Meditation is narcissistic.
Frankly, I’d rather do Everything at zombo.com
I'm dissatisfied with "Nothing". I need "Noting+" for 5.99 eur per month. Or give me at least couple advertisements to look at.
Doing nothing gets nothing in return, forget about easing your mind.
? Go for a walk. Walking is what our ancestors did, to go into "finding" modus. Find a route to water, find prey, find adversaries to find you and find out. Or at least find the way home.
All senses get stimulated, a moving mind in a moving body. The great outdoors, fresh air, i shite being Scottish.
If you have a problem you need to solve, but don't know how, just walk up to a overview point and look down on the problem every day.