A few days before Christmas, I felt rather stressed and frustrated. Hardly a shocking statement, since most of us feel that way at least once during the holidays. My reasons were for feeling stressed and frustrated were not unique – I was trying to finish up shopping, tie up various loose ends with work, figure out how to entertain my kids during winter break, run unexpected errands, take care of various household duties, and address all the collective minutiae that occasionally gets the best of us.
Now ordinarily, at the end of the day (which for me begins the moment my kids are finally tucked into bed and no longer asking me for one more story or hug), I decompress by doing something. Sometimes I read, or work, or watch a movie, or scroll randomly through my phone, or have a conversation with my wife, or play a game, or grab a drink with a friend. And every one of these activities is beneficial in its own way. But this one particular night, I just wasn’t in the mood to do any of them.
So I did something I haven’t done in a very long time. I did absolutely nothing.
I didn’t look at my phone. I didn’t watch TV. I didn’t go to sleep. I didn’t talk to anyone about anything. I didn’t try meditating or focusing on my breathing. I didn’t even really think about much, to be honest. I just lay in my bed, doing nothing to the best of my ability for about an hour.
And it was exactly what I needed.
The best definition I’ve ever heard about stress is the following: “Stress is when you’re here, but you want to be there.” During the holidays for certain, but also during all kinds of other moments in life, we find ourselves feeling the desire (or the outright need) to be somewhere else – getting work done when we’re with our families, or spending time with our families when we’re working late. Anytime we are pulled in multiple directions at once, we have the potential to feel stressed.
The prescription for reducing that stress is usually to remove ourselves, if only briefly, from the things that cause the stress in order to give our brains a chance to recharge. That’s why you might take a break from an all-night study session even if you don’t feel fully prepared, or tell your spouse to come in and take over with the kids because you know you’ve passed your point. Our strategies are usually peaceful ones – take a walk, read a book, listen to some music, watch an episode of your favorite show, etc. All different ways to give your brain a break.
But every one of those strategies still involves you doing something, even if it’s something that you theoretically want to be doing. And sometimes, when I feel like I have eighteen things to do and am doing all of them poorly, the idea of ‘reading a book’ suddenly becomes a to-do item, a thing I need to knock off my list (“I’ll read two chapters, then get back to it”) – and then, without intending to, I can find myself feeling stressed about the thing that was supposed to reduce my stress.
That’s what I ultimately decided a couple weeks ago, that any activity was going to function like another item on my endless list. So instead, I gave myself permission to set all lists aside, to carve out 60 minutes where absolutely nothing important or pleasurable was going to get done. I told myself it was OK to be intentionally and completely useless to everyone and everything – and after an hour, I was ready to pick my list back up.
I’m writing about this at the beginning of 2026 because ‘doing nothing’ – and I mean truly, absolutely nothing – is a strategy that I almost never use. Most of the time I don’t even remember that it’s an option. But it is, and it can be a very important one when none of our normal stress-relieving strategies seem to be accomplishing what they’re supposed to.
So this year, I hope you occasionally kick back, stare at the wall, and turn your brain completely off. I honestly believe that doing so from time to time will allow you to have a more enjoyable, and more productive year than you might otherwise.
