The 24 Hour “Do Nothing” Challenge
mattlakeman.org
mattlakeman.org
It's not always easy, and when there are holidays overlapping the Sabbath, making it 49 hours, that can sometimes be grating.
That said, we find fulfillment in long walks, community meals, board games, books, sitting around and lazing about, etc.
During these times, i do have amazing conversations (and arguments) with my family. And the space created for us is so rare these days. I can't imagine life with out our weekly ritual.
That said, can you explain this line -
> If it's on, it's on. If it's off, it's off
Obvious exceptions are made for such things as life-saving situations, the practice of medicine, etc.
For lights, we leave bathroom lights on, but turn off lights and leave it that way. We go so far as to either have switch covers or tape to prevent accidental state changes.
Does it mean not using devices with screens and/or Internet connectivity or does it include avoiding things like refrigerators, washing machines, blenders, dishwashers, ovens, stoves, electric lights, doorbells, electric kettles, water heaters, fans, air conditioning, automobiles, and many more that are built with technology?
For the most part, we don't turn anything on or off. It stays in it's state. The water heater or furnace have their own systems they abide by, and given they aren't alive, they aren't required to abide by the rules of the Sabbath. This goes for any autonomous system: timers for lights, crock pots, utilities, servers, answering machines, faxes, etc. We don't cook food, so either everything has to be prepared in advance, or we eat cold stuff.
We also follow more strict rules that are beyond tech. Technology is just one thing we avoid (long story short is we are prohibited from making a fire, sparks generated but turning something on is conceivably a distant, but related spark, thus we avoid turning on things). We don't write (no pen/paper) and as adults we don't usually play with chalk, but our children are less contained by this nuance. We don't chop wood. We try to even avoid making plans for after the Sabbath during the Sabbath.
We don't drive cars, do normal work, run errands, do chores (sweeping, cleaning up, etc are fine, but some people hold that even doing dishes may violate their Sabbath, but to each their own).
Given the well-known Askhenazi propensity for hair splitting, shouldn't using FETs to turn electricity on/off be ok? There really is no spark in that case.
Edit: I guess I just don't understand this approach. GP is clearly in a different life situation (has a family) than the person who wrote the article. As this sort of task clearly isn't doable for everyone, why not discuss ways you can still achieve, or try to achieve, the same or similar goals based on your own situation? Does HN not foster constructive conversation, even if it's tangential to the original point?
Enjoy the rest of your day!
I'm not able, not interested, in doing nothing, but I'm interested in ways that help me look at the world differently, and in the case of the blog 's intent, i feel my approach has validity, albeit in a different way.
Traditionally three Sabbath meals are in fact required, though you can't do the labor to prepare them or use energy to heat them.
It is odd that the OP and every comment thus far on HN skip over that aspect. As OP describes it this is also a fast.
The person who accepted the wager and started living in his bathroom in absolute darkness ultimately won the bet. The guy betting against him kept trying to offer him deals to get out of it until they agreed on a payout of $62k after 20 days. There's 0 doubt he could have made it all 30.
Kind of interesting to compare and contrast the mindsets.
[1] - https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/jan/10/rich-alati-pok...
This is addressed in the article:
> Young was relieved. He had come to a gradual realization that he hadn’t given enough weight to the fact that Alati was there by choice. “So if you’re in solitary confinement in prison, that’s a scary situation. You don’t know if you’re going to get out ever,” he said. “Here, if he lasts, he gets 100k, but these guys in solitary confinement get nothing – they have to do that.”
> Kupers says that distinction – “remembering why he is there, that it is not permanent” – is crucial. “Prisoners in solitary confinement tell me they are afraid they will never be released and they will die in solitary.”
> Alati, after his own taste of isolation, agrees. “[Prisoners in solitary] are not given a bathtub with sugar scrubs, and essential oil and food, and a yoga mat. They’re not given that stuff, so if I didn’t have that stuff, and I wasn’t actually free and I wasn’t being paid, that’s why [it would be a] punishment.”
---
> And won’t such a prolonged time in darkness affect your eyes?
This is also addressed in the article:
> Alati was ready to leave the bathroom. He put on eclipse sunglasses, which blocked out any light, to protect his eyes. When he finally emerged, the noise and commotion was overwhelming.
> Kupers says that distinction – “remembering why he is there, that it is not permanent” – is crucial. “Prisoners in solitary confinement tell me they are afraid they will never be released and they will die in solitary.”
> Alati was ready to leave the bathroom. He put on eclipse sunglasses, which blocked out any light, to protect his eyes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Silence_(The_Twilight_Zone...
Go camping or something in an area without cell reception for a few days. I promise you will be fine. Doing nothing for a few days is very easy.
This wasn't only "no phone"; he eschewed books and social contact and sound as well.
No. It is a frame challenge.
The blogpost says "I’m hopelessly addicted to little dopamine bursts provided by algorithmically optimized technology (in my case – Reddit, video games, phone messages, and having music or tv shows in the background),"
The solution to that is not to do nothing. If you have this problem you precisely should do something. Hiking is a good idea. Or sitting down with friends and just chatting, without any of those distractions. Or working on a project where you concentrate on your tools (preferably physical tools) for days on end to achieve some results.
> Camping/hiking/exploring outdoors is the exact opposite of doing nothing.
Camping/hiking/exploring outdoors is also the exact opposite of being "hopelessly addicted to little dopamine bursts provided by algorithmically optimized technology".
Obviously a person can just choose to challenge themselves with 24 hours of no stimulation, that's fine as a weird, maybe interesting experiment, and I'm glad the author wrote about it. It's just that the author seem to have a different reason in mind when he created the challenge.
It's a little bit like the commonly-referenced XY problem in programming. Someone thinks that they really need to do Y in order to solve X, without having stepped back and confirm that Y really is necessary to solving x.
Three days after the challenge, how is the author going up be different? Most likely they're never going to do that again. But a week-long "experiment" with getting outdoors more often might have turned into lasting change.
> I wanted to see if I had the willpower to cut off all stimulation for an extended period of time.
To be fair to you though, that part of the sentence was preceded with the part you quoted, making it natural to assume that the author believes the solution to his problem of being addicted to what he says he's addicted to is to have zero stimulation. That doesn't mean my assumption is correct though, and it seems even less so given the plain language I quoted above.
If you want to clear your mind of thoughts and any action, go camping in freezing weather and relish in the fact that you are literally too cold to think about anything but sitting in your tent trying to stay warm by shivering and not being able to think about anything but the moment to moment seconds of living, where every single moment of existence is nothing but digging into a little hole in yourself and staying warm there.
I assure you, no words games, no boredom, no trying to recite the presidents in order, nothing. Just pure ID.
Or get depression and sleep for 2 weeks straight.
Amusingly there was a time when I did nothing but sit at home and brood and it was when life sucked and I was depressed (in the colloquial sense). The thing was that it wasn't peaceful. It was just misery folding in on itself.
But I've also had the other kind of solitude and isolation and I like it. So I get what he's going for.
> I wanted to see if I had the willpower to cut off all stimulation for an extended period of time.
I think they're crazy, but they're pretty specific about what they were trying to achieve. Personally, I'd much rather spend my time doing what you describe than putting myself into solitary confinement they way they did.
> I cannot engage in any stimulating behavior using external mechanisms for 24 hours
Your suggestion of "touch a tree" would be considered a stimulating behavior. So would "go camping", as there is tons of external stimuli outside.
The exercise was on purpose to limit any outside (outside the head) interaction with anything. Really anything.
What you're suggesting would be healthy for everyone, and a recommended activity for almost all humans. But, it wasn't what the author was aiming for.
I argue that the author was aiming for the wrong thing to solve or overcome the problem they describe in their introductory paragraph.
They conclude: "Either way, I’m glad I did it. I guess I’m not so hopelessly addicted to short term stimulation that I can’t deprive myself of it for a longish period of time."
And set up a plan for the next experiment: "I’m pretty tired of sitting in rooms doing nothing, so my next experiments will be more exciting. I promise."
Going from one extreme (everything allowed) to another (nothing allowed), to try to find some happy medium that makes them happy with themselves. No one was hurt, nothing bad happened, they're just playing around with the idea and reporting what happened.
But I also love taking my kids camping, hiking, biking, etc, and that's also a good break from the internet, but I think my point is just that they're not the same and there's totally room for both.
The camping Im talking about is the type where you cannot do anything without requiring significant effort to abort.
Its like being on a thru-hike. Once you are several days away from humanity, there really isn't anything to think about but continuing to walk, one step at a time.
Whilst I think 24hr is a ridiculous amount of life to waste doing nothing, I think I'd now agree that the Quaker's were onto something when they simply stopped once a week to think about life.
When I think of doing nothing, I think of doing nothing. No catching up on thoughts we don't have time for, no chasing ideas, just nothing. It's really hard for a few minutes, let alone 30, let alone 24h!
Part of this is that I think of quiet reflection as healthy, if not necessary, and thus, it is something.
Although, I would say it is impossible to really 'do nothing'. OP basically spent 24hrs letting his mind wander, which is something.
> I wanted to see if I had the willpower to cut off all stimulation for an extended period of time.
That's quite a bit different than doing nothing.
I think the idea of doing nothing, or even trying to cut off all stimulation is, using your term, repulsive, because it's just so unnatural, and nearly impossible. The darkness of a dark room itself is a kind of stimulation, as much as the absence of sound or social interaction might be.
As natural humans sitting in the dark at night, we'd be totally engaged and on hight alert the instant that the familiar sounds of the night stopped, because that might signal danger. To the human brain, nearly everything has meaning, and often does so when there's no actual stimulus in the first place (for better or for worse).
I can imagine some people get restless the second they're conscious though and pick up their phone first thing, those may need to make more of a conscious decision to do nothing if they think their behaviour is problematic. It's not my place to judge whether it is though, I've spent big chunks of my life in 'frivolous' activities like playing video games and have zero regrets.
Something else about those tasks they mentioned, this is how I procrastinate. When I'm really disengaged with something I really don't want to do, I end up mopping the floors, doing laundry, or some other mundane task I don't like doing. Only to feel bad about the procrastination later. When you're intentionally taking time away from something that consumes so much of your life like work, priorities rearrange pretty quickly. I stopped drinking as much on weekends, and my sleep schedule adjusted in a way where I was waking up much earlier because I wasn't staying up all night trying to squeeze as much "free time" before work the next day.
But the one day workweeks were still nice; I got a big lego set as a going away gift from my previous employer so I spent a lot of time on that.
You see this with new years resolutions where people go balls to the wall with something and then just end up where they started because you can't just put years of mind-conditioning down overnight. It's better to make incremental small changes.
When I caught H1N1, I was too sick to leave my room for several days and no one was around for ~10 hours at a time.
What the author of the article describes is almost the same thing, but worse. At least in jail people were chatty and friendly (I know, right?). But there were times when you'd be in a cell by yourself for 6+ hours and that was not fun at all.
I don't recommend that the OP do it the way I did it.
I'd been pulled over because my vehicle's registration was expired. The officer didn't issue a ticket for that and just gave me a warning. But the car was also missing a front bumper and had no mirrors. I was issued a "fix-it" ticket for the lack of mirrors. The instructions in the citation for how to resolve the issue were crystal clear and provided a more than generous amount of time to do it.
It would have been very easy to avoid ending up in jail, but me, being a freshly 18 year old kid with undiagnosed (at the time) ADHD just didn't get around to resolving the issue. I could have gone to any auto parts store and spent $20 on a single cheap generic mirror, gone to any police station with my "fix-it" ticket and shown that I'd fixed the issue, paid the $5.00 fee, and been done. But I didn't. I just forgot about it.
When you do that, it's considered to be the same as ignoring court orders. A warrant was issued for my arrest. I was pulled over on a Friday night and spent the weekend waiting for my turn to explain to a judge on the following Monday morning why I ignored the citation.
The initial citation and path to compliance was totally reasonable - maybe too reasonable considering it allowed me to continue driving around with no mirrors in one of the most car-dense metropolises in the world. I could have done the right thing and it wouldn't have gone on any record, or reported to my insurance company, or risked losing my license. Zero consequences except a safer car.
I don't disagree that there are obvious flaws with the American justice system, but this example ranks very low on that list in my opinion.
For what it's worth, the experience of spending a weekend in "adult" jail as an 18 year old changed my life in positive ways. I had lived my life not knowing I had ADHD, and this event was a catalyst in helping get diagnosed. That diagnosis helped make sense of the common refrain of "why are you failing your classes - you have so much potential", and helped me understand I wasn't stupid. Just different.
I don't like to imagine how different my life would be today had I not had that experience and subsequent diagnosis.
If I were to replicate the same experiment, I suspect that my issue would not be lack of willpower to abstain from "junk food" stimulation, but rather dealing with the nagging voice in the back of my head constantly reminding me that I'm fettering away the precious little time I have truly to myself — weekends and holidays are the only time when I have the privilege of pouring my full self into the things that I want to work on, rather than the lions' share going toward my job. I can't see "nothing" time becoming a part of my schedule without at least a four-day workweek, and it'd probably work best if I were to shift from full-time to part-time or move to contracting/consulting where I set my own hours.
I've had a lot of luck with achieving some of the clarity of mind the writer mentions by simply habitually writing down ideas and preferring working to make these ideas reality in my spare time over scrolling through reddit and the like. Doing that has freed up mental bandwidth to a degree far greater than I ever thought it could.
I'm a little inspired to try this for a couple of hours and see what things my brain wants to think about!
See it as an exercise, where you'll become stronger over time.
I'm not sure where this comes from, but I've been this way as long as I can remember.
Had you lived 150-200 years ago you'd be exposed to a lot less artificial stimuli than you are now, and that in itself wouldn't have made your life torturous minute-to-minute.
Anecdotally, it feels to me like my mind is always moving at the same relative speed, and my biggest struggle is maintaining an acceptable level of stimulation.
Too much, and I become overstimulated and become ineffective: I either jump from focus to focus too quickly to accomplish anything, or I get stuck in "ADHD paralysis" where my mind basically locks up trying to sort through all the inbound data.
Too little, and I get to the point where the feeling of boredom itself becomes overwhelming. That very quickly leads to depression, anxiety, or both.
There is a certain type of software development that will really stimulate me, sometimes even overly so, but it's not clear if it slows me down. I think because I'm happier, I'm less prone to noticing.
I often feel paralyzed, and wouldn't say I hate boredom so much; mostly because you can't fail, and my mind wanders. I don't think it's good for me, and can probably lead to, and co-mingle with depression.
(Obviously it makes a difference if you're voluntarily doing it to yourself and could stop at any moment.)
Doing nothing always sounds great, because there's never work in doing nothing. Even watching TV requires active concentration, who is this, what's their motive, etc. If I start cooking, there will be tons of cleaning. Video games require active participation, plus the same problem as movies.
That said, I can't say I'm too happy doing absolutely nothing. I don't find the time to think / reflect helpful, because I'm constantly doing so.
I feel like there’s a somewhat of a vilification of doing something for fun. Whether it’s video games, television, Reddit etc. We’re trained socially we need to be productive. We need to either be improving ourselves (mentally or physically) or making money.
I’d argue though that these “dopamine hits” aren’t a bad thing if you’re reasonably successful in the rest of your life. People deserve time to veg out.
We have both a fast and slow thinking mode based on the challenges, experiences, and changes in our daily environment. It’s not until we actually experience the slow thinking side that we believe it could work for us as we’re too used to the fast one.
And try shrooms :)
--
lying in bed just thinking
pace around the room
get lost in trains of thought
play word games with myself
recite the American presidents in order
name the first 150 Pokémon
--
Sounds similar to a "darkness" retreat.
Though you bring up a good point. Religion aside, I wonder what would happen to society if it was somehow compulsory to avoid technology for a day. I've found my life to be much more fulfilling avoiding computers these days. But perhaps that the ADHD talking. I am particularly vulnerable to the swaths of distractions available on a modern computer to the point that when I need to get work done I physically disconnect the ethernet cable from my PC unless I absolutely need it.
It seems like it would be well within the spirit of the experiment to leave a microphone recording the whole time.
I've often found myself doom-scrolling, snacking too much, or vaping more than I should be. I've also found myself eating the same comfort food with no pleasure attached to it, it was just mindless snacking and my dopamine 'buildup' was diminished.
The science says its bullshit. You are literally on the level of people swearing to homeopathy. Your anecdata of 1 is not wort anything.
This dopamine bro-science is a menace.
Even a 30-60 min. do-nothing challenge can do a lot to help you get your attention back
And that can be explained as habitual pleasure-seeking.