The Art of Not Doing Shit

As I mentioned previously, one of the first things I wanted to do upon FIREing was Naval Ravikant’s Art of Doing Nothing. This is 60 days straight of one hour unguided meditations, where you sit quietly with your eyes closed, and allow your mind to go down whatever rabbit hole it does. By the end of the 60 days Naval believes you’ll have ordered your mental landscape and resolved a lot of inner issues, some of which you didn’t even know were there. This post will cap off how this all went for me, as the last time I wrote about this I was just over halfway through it.

TL;DR version: meh.

Before I get into my conclusions, let’s look at the data. My third love being spreadsheets, I of course created a google form to track my thoughts after each session.

Here’s what my mood as before each meditation:

Here’s how I was after:

So a modest improvement in mood. I also tracked my thoughts I had about what to do next in life, as FIREing may end up being more of a mini-retirement than a full on never work again thing. Note that I enabled the ability to check multiple boxes; most days I wanted to pursue more than one thing. I also had a “fill in the blank” response, which is why there’s multiple “chill” responses. Eventually I edited this section and created a separate “chill” response. So my total “chill” selection value should be like 28:

I then measured how much motivation I had to pursue whichever of the above I selected. 1 was lackluster interest bordering on apathy, 7 was all encompassing passion for whatever. I mostly fell into what I would classify as pretty interested, but not going to kill myself over it:

One thing I considered doing soon after leaving work was getting back into a formal Brazilian Jiu Jitsu practice. I had mixed feelings about this, mostly related to the source of my motivation. So I created the “Do BJJ?” response to capture what I thought each day. 1 was I had no desire to do it, 7 was “hell yeah!!”.

Looks like mostly nah:

I kept track of random thoughts I had in a fill in the blank section, of which I won’t be posting here because some responses would give away my identity and I’m still keeping this blog anonymous. Not a big loss, because it was pretty random. Thoughts ranged from “dandelions” to “couldn’t sleep at 0100, so just did the meditation then”.

The forms also tracked the date I did each meditation, which I used as an accountability tool to ensure I did 60 days straight. I also kept track of what time I did each day’s meditation, and I was all over the place:

I was clustered around 0500 and the 1000-1300 range, which was when my kids were asleep. Which leads me to my next section:

I didn’t do this right

That Naval guy says you’re supposed to do this meditation at the same time every day, preferably right after waking. I obviously did not do that. This was because, hey, I’ve got small kids. Also, I was transitioning from working late shift to a normal person schedule. I prioritized sleep, and was trying that thing where I get sunlight soon after waking to help shift my sleep schedule. This prioritization eliminated my ability to get up early to meditate, as was recommenced. So I just got it in when I could. This inconsistency may have reduced the effectiveness of the whole experience.

When I was about halfway through, I mentioned other reasons why I didn’t think this whole “Art of Doing Nothing” experience may have not been as effective on me. To sum up:

1. I’ve been meditating for years, so this wasn’t a huge shift.
2. I’ve had jobs that have forced me to sit and do relatively nothing but stay awake and let my thoughts drift as I vaguely paid attention to something, so I sort of have this “doing nothing” thing down.
3. I’ve been through shit tons of therapy, so I’ve probably worked through my bigger issues already.

The Good Stuff

Well first of all, I did it. Maybe I didn’t reach nirvana, but at least I checked this thing off the list (which yes, is a very non-mindful attitude to have. I will sit in a non-judgmental state of whatever as I contemplate this.) Aside from that, the biggest benefit I noticed was that I worked through daily issues much quicker as my thoughts inevitably drifted to whatever was going on that day.

For example, when we found out our Daycare was doing shady stuff, I previously would have fretted about the whole thing for a day or two. Instead, I sat down to meditate, and of course the Daycare issues is where my mind went. Fairly early in that session I worked through all of the angles, and realized our course of action was clear and then stopped worrying about it. This was pretty nice.

I had similar experiences with other drama that was going on during that time. In the future, as shit inevitably happens, I may try to meditate on the issue for an hour. It was similar to that adage of “sleeping on it”; after I was done, even if my mind wasn’t completely made up, the problem was much more clearly defined.

I also felt pretty chill for an hour or so after each session, so that was nice. Regrettably, that effect was easily displaced whenever the chaos of two small kids collided with my chill. So it goes. That leads to :

The Not so Good

Despite being retired, and having childcare in place for the first 40ish days of this experience, it was still a bit of a logistical issue to squeeze in a lengthy meditation every day. I ended up stressing a bit everyday to try and get the thing in, especially on weekends when the only viable time was during the kids’ naps that don’t always go smoothly. This could have been fixed had I gotten up earlier to knock the thing out. I probably should have waited a few more months to get fully adjusted to normal person sleep schedule, and then proceeded with the art of nothing.

As I lamented in the halfway post, I didn’t trip balls, nor did I have any life altering experiences or shifts in beliefs. This was still the case when I finished the 60 days. And I still don’t know what I want to do when I grown up! (Though I think this experience, especially tracking the vacillation of my thoughts on my future path, helped me accept this as just the way it’s going to be.)

Maybe the positive anecdotes described online are a result of surviorship bias, or maybe they also had a life altering increase of SEO skills as a result of their doing of nothing. And maybe I just didn’t get all of that stuff because I was doing it wrong, along with all of the other reasons I listed above that made this whole exercise less effective for me.

Recommend ?

Meh. If you’ve got an extra hour a day, and you haven’t done much meditating, sure. Go for it. Seeing as how only 15 people(half of which I suspect are bots) have ever visited this blog, I don’t see this post making a huge counterpoint to the smart rich guy who recommended such a practice on the other smart rich guy’s podcast.

Overall, I’m glad I did it. Had I not, I would have always wondered what my experience would have been. And that’s better than nothing.