[HN Gopher] Nothing: Simply Do Nothing
___________________________________________________________________
Nothing: Simply Do Nothing
Author : psvisualdesign
Score : 399 points
Date : 2024-09-15 22:40 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (usenothing.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (usenothing.com)
| ok_dad wrote:
| That's a lot of text for nothing.
| notfed wrote:
| Seriously. Some feedback to author: the page is awesome up to
| "You've been idle for X seconds." Delete every word after that.
| cubefox wrote:
| But then you couldn't scroll and the punchline of even
| scrolling resetting your timer would be lost.
| TeaVMFan wrote:
| Intriguing. Perhaps adding focus gained detection with a timer
| reset would increase the motivation to do nothing.
| tourmalinetaco wrote:
| I had a notification pop down while looking at it and the timer
| did reset, stopped, and said ,,that was definitely something.
| Let's try nothing.". A neat little site, that's for sure. Also
| worrying that websites can see when I receive a notification.
| pjerem wrote:
| That's probably just a detection of the tab losing focus.
|
| Edit : nope, you just scrolled the page :) [0]
|
| [0] : https://github.com/remvze/nothing/blob/5402ae06169c67bd
| fa8b6...
| makeitdouble wrote:
| 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.
| djaouen wrote:
| Buddhism, son!
| bschmidt1 wrote:
| 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.
| pjerem wrote:
| > 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 was taught that this is not entirely true : your automatic
| breathing is influenced by your morphology, your posture, your
| current levels of energy, and your current emotions. And it
| sounds like the feedback loop can go reverse : intentionally
| breathing have an impact on your posture, your level of energy
| and your emotion.
|
| I have no source to support my claims so don't take my words as
| any truth, that's just a belief multiple people shared to me
| including my doctor.
|
| But I do feel like intentional breathing have a direct impact
| on my levels of anxiety. Not magic, but useful.
| Nevermark wrote:
| I have had a similar insight.
|
| People often wonder what advice they would give their younger
| self. This would be it for me.
|
| It something seems too difficult, it is likely because you are
| still struggling with a pre-requisite. Go back to working on
| the previous foundation until your mastery is complete.
|
| This is true for work, mental & fitness progress.
|
| I.e. if you find losing weight hard, you probably need to
| improve your diet (not to lose weight, but to find healthy food
| you enjoy enough to become a self-reinforcing habit).
|
| Don't try to improve your diet in order to lose weight. That is
| trying to solve two big things, on two different levels, at
| once.
|
| This may take a while, but eventually you can find your way to
| an exceptionally healthy diet you like too much to require any
| discipline to stay on.
|
| That is a health foundation of lasting value. And with that
| foundatiin, when you try to lose weight again, it is much
| easier.
|
| Likewise, if you find it is hard to improve your diet, even in
| increments, perhaps you are fatigued? You may need to improve
| your sleep routine until you are habitually not tired.
|
| For some of us, that might take a lot of work. But focusing on
| it, instead of downstream efforts will pay off.
|
| Etc.
|
| Foundations should be iterated on until they are self-
| perpetuatingly solid. Then the next thing will be much easier.
|
| Math and physics are mental versions.
|
| The result for any path: Go slow (iterate & explore to complete
| fluency & habit) to go fast (compounding instead of linear
| gains in understanding & progress).
| necovek wrote:
| > ...exceptionally healthy diet you like too much to require
| any discipline to stay on.
|
| There's no such thing. Eating only 50 avocados a day (so
| called "superfood") won't get you healthy or make you lose
| weight.
|
| Too much of anything is not healthy.
|
| A "healthy diet" is matched up with your body, short- and
| long-term needs, activities, mental state, etc.
|
| I do agree with the suggested approach for achieving anything
| significant, just nitpicking on some of the language in your
| dieting example.
| Nevermark wrote:
| > Too much of anything is not healthy.
|
| You have lost me. I said a healthy diet you love.
|
| So critiquing me as suggesting anything that is not a
| healthy diet seems odd.
|
| A healthy diet can be created many ways, all involve a lot
| of variety.
|
| But it can be convenient too. If you find the right mix
| (for your own tastes) of "superfoods" as a foundation. I.e.
| hummus, mixed greens, mixed berries, a mix of nuts, a mix
| of seeds, sardines, salmon & tuna (but not too much), eggs,
| etc.
|
| If your fridge, pantry, and eating habits cover all your
| basic nutrition multiple ways by default, then adding a
| variety of other healthy foods can be done very
| spontaneously without any need for planning.
|
| I know, it took me a few years, and a lot of iteration, but
| it would be hard to beat my diet.
|
| Even my snacks are up there, like edamame, chocolate in
| moderation, fresh veggies, high protein low sugar ice
| cream, etc.
|
| Achieving healthy autopilot is the point.
| necovek wrote:
| In formal theory, it would be called a proof by
| contradiction when extended to an extreme.
|
| Even with the "right mix", if you eat 5x the amount your
| lifestyle and body and mind need, you ain't ever going to
| lose weight or get to a healthy state. Obese people are
| (usually) obese because they eat too much, not just
| because of the type of food they eat. Heck, today both
| keto and vegan are considered "healthy" and they are on
| the opposite end of the spectrum when it comes to diet
| choices.
|
| I am basically arguing that, to an extent, it's more
| important how _much_ you eat, vs what you eat. Again,
| this is all comparative (eg. eating McDonalds burgers for
| the rest of your life is "healthy" compared to not
| eating anything at all, but that's a useless
| distinction).
|
| Plenty of people in the past have eaten "unhealthy"
| (white bread, fried meat and vegetables) yet didn't have
| an obesity or health problem, because they countered that
| with a balanced activity (physical work) and mental load
| (shared responsibilities).
|
| So my point is that you should reach that "autopilot" on
| the amount of the food you get, and then you can be
| pretty liberal in how you achieve it (obviously, don't
| have chocolate for breakfast, lunch and dinner). I do
| agree getting to the autopilot is where you should put
| your effort to.
| Nevermark wrote:
| If you need to eat more, you need to eat more. You need a
| different mix
|
| There isn't a diet that works for everyone in both health
| & physical & psychological diet needs
|
| The point is always making progress. Accumulating foods
| that work better. So learn and continually try things.
|
| Anyone can make progress, that is beneficial.
|
| I am still making progress, in food quality &
| convenience, which blows my mind.
|
| And I don't doubt there are medical and mental issues
| that need more than a healthy diet intervention
|
| But that doesn't eliminate the benefits from being
| healthier, easier.
|
| You don't know how much eating healthier automatically
| will impact seemingly independent or counter issues until
| trying. A sustained changed diet changes our responses to
| food physically & mentally in significant & positive
| ways.
|
| My diet has changed me.
| necovek wrote:
| I don't doubt that, and good for you! In a sense, that
| should be obvious to anyone who's ever been a bit more
| edgy because they lacked the carbohydrates for the moment
| ("eat some sugar"), but larger changes will certainly
| trigger a larger change in body response (hormones,
| energy levels, mood...).
|
| From the get go, I only challenged the notion that the
| main issue for people who want to lose weight is the type
| of the food they eat, but instead, the _amount_ of the
| food they eat.
|
| It seems like we are arguing past each other though :)
| card_zero wrote:
| Experimentally, increasing oxygen doesn't reduce how often
| people yawn.
|
| We still don't know why people (or various mammals) yawn.
| koziserek wrote:
| your body doesn't regulate its functions based on diminishing
| o2 levels, but raising co2 levels
| card_zero wrote:
| That was tested too, according to the Wikipedia page about
| yawns. Still no.
| spiffytech wrote:
| I've enjoyed using Sit, which is similar in spirit:
|
| https://sonnet.io/posts/sit/
| akira2501 wrote:
| > 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.
| davidepaci wrote:
| It doesn't reset when I alt+tab
| knowitnone wrote:
| you do nothing while I use your CPU to mine crypto. thanks
| madpen wrote:
| 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.
| eleveriven wrote:
| Was it hard to switch perspective?
| DaoVeles wrote:
| 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.
| pjerem wrote:
| I really do think it's more a message / a sort or artistic
| expression, than an app :)
| edweis wrote:
| Looking at the source code, I have never seen so many files for
| such a simple HTML page.
| abdusco wrote:
| Astro[0]: wrong tool for this job.
|
| https://astro.build/
| skrebbel wrote:
| I assume the author is good at quickly whipping stuff up with
| Astro, which makes it an excellent tool for the job.
| rpigab wrote:
| I'd advise a complete rewrite of Astro to Rust+WASM, then add
| most of what Angular does inside the framework, then usenothing
| will benefit from it.
| lifthrasiir wrote:
| I was also quite surprised, and I took a bit of challenge to
| make it a single file that faithfully reproduces the exact
| behavior and embeds _all_ dependencies including the web font,
| besides from Inter which is only used for toasts and barely
| distinguishable from Arial in this context. It weighs 3,123
| bytes without the specifically subsetted font which takes
| additional 10,433 bytes.
|
| https://gist.github.com/lifthrasiir/f46725d3e9e9d055da40b3de...
| archargelod wrote:
| Really cool.
|
| I know almost nothing about web dev, but that looked like a
| nice quick challenge. So I spent maybe 20 minutes to get it
| 90% there. It's missing a portion of text below the timer and
| a toast. 1948 bytes
|
| https://gist.github.com/Archargelod/d121ae5377a0d09b0133b7b0.
| ..
| alex_suzuki wrote:
| You have improved nothing.
| alex_suzuki wrote:
| Joke obviously lost on some...
| Gooblebrai wrote:
| What were the main difficulties?
| lifthrasiir wrote:
| Implementing absolutely everything, because I wasn't sure
| which part was intentional or not. My version even
| replicates some bugs and subtle behaviors: for example the
| toast animation lasts 5 seconds, which is measured from the
| beginning of fade-in animation to the _beginning_ of fade-
| out animation.
| noobermin wrote:
| Wtf, there's a great irony in this right here.
| jonwinstanley wrote:
| Surely a html web page and maybe 5 lines of JS could have
| accomplished the same thing?
|
| Or am I missing something?
| alex_suzuki wrote:
| No. See lifthrasiir's answer above.
| shahzaibmushtaq wrote:
| Doing nothing gets nothing in return, forget about easing your
| mind.
| sans_souse wrote:
| I was expecting an xyzzy reference.
| sys42590 wrote:
| 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]
| zingerlio wrote:
| I relate so much to his recent video on Friday meetings.
| eleveriven wrote:
| Humor can often make such profound messages more accessible and
| memorable...
| bko wrote:
| What philosophical truths?
|
| I've known people that 'do nothing'. The modern day equivalent
| of that is the pot head. It's a lot easier to do nothing when
| you're stoned. The other alternative is the basement dweller
| kid of a well to do couple that just spends his day playing
| video games. Due to his parent's hard work (or luck), he can
| probably afford to do so for the rest of his life. But still
| seems depressing to me to think about.
| elaus wrote:
| But that kid in your example isn't doing _nothing_, they are
| playing video games. That is entirely different from
| consciously pausing and doing nothing.
| grugagag wrote:
| That kid is doing nothing with their life, there's a
| difference between that and a nornal persob's downtime that
| makes sure we don't task out with some goal that feels like
| doing nothing but it's got some agenda: no planned activity!
| helboi4 wrote:
| If you're playing video games you're literally not doing
| nothing. The point is to give yourself time to reflect and
| breathe. If you're stoned and that makes it easy to meditate
| for ages, you could probably count that as doing nothing.
| Although you should probably worry if you simply cannot sit
| still for any significant amount of time without being
| stoned. But yeah if you're getting stoned and like watching
| movies and stuffing your face then you're not doing nothing.
| 01acheru wrote:
| Thanks for the link! When it is well done comedy often covers
| something more profound and summarizes it in an accessible and
| more memorable manner just like the video you are talking
| about.
|
| "The world is fucked, and you cannot un-fuck it."
|
| "You will die one day just as confused as you are now."
|
| "Everything you think you need to do was done before you and
| will be done after you."
|
| "Whether you are fat or thin haters will hate."
|
| "Nothing really matters."
|
| There are some really deep insights in all of those thoughts,
| thanks for sharing.
|
| PS: this remembers me of a sketch about giraffes being an
| animal created by a gay friend of the comedian, after the
| sketch I learned that giraffes engage in male-male acts more
| often than male-female acts and got mindblown. They have been
| called "especially gay" for this fact.
| gffrd wrote:
| I hear the voice of the stoics in there ...
| yetihehe wrote:
| > 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.
| aussiethebob wrote:
| Could we get a leaderboard feature
| mjhagen wrote:
| I made it to 2 minutes and 5 seconds.
| rwoerz wrote:
| Breathing, heart beats, and keeping the sphincter closed is
| allowed.
| GrumpyNl wrote:
| 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.
| alganet wrote:
| I don't get it. What is the difference between this website and
| the rest of the internet?
| s_dev wrote:
| You're actively do nothing instead of passively doing nothing.
| oersted wrote:
| Witty, I like it. It also highlights the subtle irony of
| turning "doing nothing" into yet another thing you need to
| optimize.
| mipsi wrote:
| And even when intentionally doing nothing, there is some obscure
| desire to measure how much nothing we are actually doing. Hence
| the idle counter.
| thinkingemote wrote:
| There's an idea that modern lives demand value in material
| terms. Usually it's monetary value. It's based on materialism
| and economics and can be seen most clearly in consumerism.
|
| Even not spending time or money has to be worth something. Why
| do nothing if I can't measure the benefits.
|
| Another example of this could be in the adoption of
| "Mindfulness" vs meditation. Mindfulness is a useful thing it
| can be measured and it has an industry behind it.
|
| It's a philosophy that we see more and more in every part of
| our lives.
|
| Consider art or poetry. Did people make art to be measured or
| to be useful?
| Frost1x wrote:
| Utilitarianism definitely has a lot of well established
| shortcomings, like quantifying utility and doing so
| objectively which sort of, IMO, makes most of it nonsensical
| as quantified utility is ultimately subjective unless you
| want utility to be defined by a consensus, which is what we
| do in practice. So it's really what the masses decide is
| valuable and how valuable, even though we know from practice
| that mass assessment isn't inherently accurate, good, or
| often even desirable. Yet we do it because it looks
| objectively analytic.
| seadan83 wrote:
| What is your definition of utilitarianism? Utilitarianism
| is not a form of democracy. Good is not subject to a vote
| and is not decided by the masses.
|
| Fwiw: "Utilitarianism is a theory of morality that
| advocates actions that foster happiness or pleasure and
| oppose actions that cause unhappiness or harm. When
| directed toward making social, economic, or political
| decisions, a utilitarian philosophy would aim for the
| betterment of society as a whole."
|
| https://www.investopedia.com/terms/u/utilitarianism.asp
| hnthrowaway121 wrote:
| > Did people make art to be measured or to be useful?
|
| Quite often to put food on the table, or for clout. There's
| an intrinsic desire to create, sure, but there's also a
| cultural context in which art is valued and certain kinds of
| art are valued more at different times or in different
| places.
|
| I suppose it's splitting hairs to say that art has some use
| both for the creator and the consumer, because it's not the
| same kind of use you mean.
|
| It's just that when I dig in to "useful" vs "useless"
| endevours there's often no clear line between them.
| maroonblazer wrote:
| There's a long history of visual art being created in the
| service of god worship. Musical art too. Much of Bach's
| oeuvre is in service to the god of the Protestant church.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| > There's an idea that modern lives demand value in material
| terms. All lives demand value in caloric or reproductive
| terms. Economics teaches us that most commodities are
| fungible. If you receive material value, this can be
| exchanged for caloric or reproductive value. Thus, modern
| (and non-modern) lives demand value in material terms. This
| isn't a philosophy, it's just a fact.
|
| It may tasteless to you, but most people are just trying to
| achieve those material terms as efficiently as possible.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| What happens when I already have all the calorific or
| reproductive value I need? Endlessly seeking more _isn 't_
| a fact.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| > What happens when I already have all the calorific or
| reproductive value I need?
|
| How would you even determine how much you need? You labor
| under the illusion that you're an intelligent being.
| Evolution does not care about "enough"... because there
| is no way to determine what "enough" is. What is enough
| today will not help you survive tomorrow's famine. Best
| stock up now. If you were so smart, you'd get that. What
| others call _greed_ is subconscious anticipation of
| calamity.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Evolution has not solved the principal-agent problem.
|
| > _What is enough today will not help you survive
| tomorrow 's famine._
|
| Tomorrow's famine will be caused by _you_ (read: those
| behaving as you describe) not knowing when enough is
| enough. Best preserve what we have, rather than waste it
| all in a frantic bid for number-goes-up.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Numbers go brrrt. It's the gamification of everything; lines of
| code written, number of tasks ticked off, number of words
| written in a day (often in the context of fanfictino, doesn't
| matter if the story is good), shades of green on github, hours
| slept, minutes meditated, seconds spent doing nothing according
| to a website promoting the virtues of doing nothing.
|
| I mean I get it, idle / factory games are one of my vices. But
| I won't let it control my existence.
| s_dev wrote:
| After a tragedy it's customary to call for a 'minute of
| silence' even this purposeful exercise of nothing but thoughts
| is measured in minutes too. I don't think it takes from the
| desired outcome.
| podgorniy wrote:
| When you did nothing you must know how much of nothing you did
| HappMacDonald wrote:
| Yeah, but number go up.
| mlukaszek wrote:
| 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 ;-)
| tillcarlos wrote:
| And a list of people doing nothing together with you.
| phtrivier wrote:
| 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.
| eleveriven wrote:
| The essence of stepping away from the relentless pace of modern
| life. But sometimes it is so hard to do nothing
| noobermin wrote:
| 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.
| physicsguy wrote:
| 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.
| bondarchuk wrote:
| Ah yes, raw dogging.
| kranner wrote:
| This kind of linguistic innovation is called a "dysphemism",
| apparently. The Wikipedia entry for "dysphemism" was quite
| enlightening.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/17/style/rawdog-flights-
| term...
| saberience wrote:
| Dysphemism isn't an innovation, it's been around a long
| time. It simply means the opposite of a euphemism. Where a
| euphemism is a nicer way of saying something, a dysphemism
| is a worse or derogatory way of saying something. E.g.
| Referring to your car as a "banger"
| kranner wrote:
| I meant the novel use of "raw dogging"
| Izkata wrote:
| "Banger" is a good thing, I think it comes from "head
| banging" at concerts.
| helboi4 wrote:
| No its not. It means its banged up. Broken. In the case
| of cars. In the case of a "banger of a tune", you are
| probably right.
| grugagag wrote:
| To me it sounds like coded speech I need to put in some
| effort to understand. It's a lot of effort to catch up with
| these, though I admit that sometimes they're funny. But
| only sometimes, most times it feels forced and senseless.
| martinbaun wrote:
| Raw dogging can mean quite different things. Apparently :D
| yqtjnvou wrote:
| 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.
| npras1 wrote:
| 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.
| baxtr wrote:
| Love it!
|
| One minor improvement idea: get rid of the timer during the
| nothing phase. I looked at it all the time.
|
| You could show the timer once someone starts scrolling again.
| malux85 wrote:
| Yeah this was me too, I found myself fixated on the timer,
| then I started computing factors of the numbers in my head,
| then I realised I just failed at doing nothing :<
| Crystalin wrote:
| You didn't fail. You succeeded...Doing nothing mostly means
| letting your mind go wherever it wants to. Counting the
| time (seconds on a clock) is a good way to start doing
| nothing
| systems_glitch wrote:
| "You don't need a million dollars to do nothin. Take a look at my
| cousin, he's broke don't do shit."
| Tade0 wrote:
| I have had a page for just that for years now:
|
| https://zombo.com/
| layer8 wrote:
| The only limit is yourself.
|
| Someone needs to update it for mobile and dark mode though.
| BeetleB wrote:
| Wait, did you make that? I remember going to that site around
| 2003-2004!
| morningsam wrote:
| Before clicking, I thought this was going to be the next step in
| the evolution of "frameworks" like http://vanilla-js.com/
| ivolimmen wrote:
| I was hoping that it would crash over the 900 seconds but it
| still worked.
| nrvn wrote:
| 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.
| andrewingram wrote:
| Interestingly, http://www.donothingfor2minutes.com/ eventually
| morphed into Calm
| johnchristopher wrote:
| Joke's on you, I got depression and that counter only goes up to
| rookie numbers. /meme :)
| rpastuszak wrote:
| 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...
| guerrilla wrote:
| Unfortunately for you, resting leads to increased productivity.
| Sucker!
| rpastuszak wrote:
| Goddammit!
| podgorniy wrote:
| I'm dissatisfied with "Nothing". I need "Noting+" for 5.99 eur
| per month. Or give me at least couple advertisements to look at.
| JLangley wrote:
| ;^D
| marci wrote:
| Gamifying stillness.
|
| - Share you highest score with friends.
|
| - Set a reminder
|
| - a "don't break the chain" calendar in the background
| anilakar wrote:
| If you gamify doing nothing, is doing nothing actually the same
| as actively playing the game?
| falcor84 wrote:
| Exactly. It's the same as using one of those meditation apps
| with gamification elements.
| InDubioProRubio wrote:
| ? 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.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| I like to go for a run or a bike ride.
|
| On a walk, you can still carry and even use a phone, listen to
| a podcast or music, or have a conversation. When you're doing a
| workout, you might wear a watch, but otherwise it's a time when
| you can't really get distracted or interrupted by anything, you
| just move, observe, and think.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I can't really use a phone outside on a sunny day. Even at
| max brightness the screen is unreadable.
| my_brain_saying wrote:
| This is excellent advice. Spending 5 hours on a weekend
| cycling is extremely relaxing, not only because you are
| intensely using your body, but because you are completely and
| utterly distracted.
|
| When I cycle, the first twenty kilometers are usually fairly
| painful: I am tired, I feel my knees, back, and muscles hurt,
| and am generally uncomfortable. After those twenty kilometers
| I enter a meditative, gelatinous phase, were I no longer
| really feel my body. I just ride. This is when I _think_; the
| same style of thinking I experience when lying, comfortably,
| in bed.
|
| After maybe 60-90 kilometers (depending on my current fitness
| level), I enter the pain stage. This is when I start feeling
| my body again. Believe it or not, this is definitely the most
| therapeutic stage. This is when I cannot think. My mind stays
| blank, and I do -- in a manner of speaking -- nothing.
|
| This lack of thought, meaning lack of stress, of worry, of
| hectic, etc., is what motivates me to go on 150 or 200
| kilometer bike rides. You feel physically refreshed and
| exhausted. You feel that you were able to think in peace and
| purely, as well as having been void of all negative,
| stressful thoughts.
|
| To anyone who has never tried an endurance sport like
| cycling: I highly recommend it. I started when I was 14, and
| it was one of the greatest decisions I ever made. It spared
| me hours of depression, fear, and stress. It also encouraged
| me to think and meditate in peace. I would not be the person
| I am today, if it were not for my dear high-school friend who
| showed me the world of cycling (as well as the world of
| communism; I owe much to this friend). Thank you.
| a_t48 wrote:
| This sounds like the cycling version of runners high. I've
| never felt it.
| gffrd wrote:
| I really identify with the phases and experience you
| describe above. The act of being engaged as your body moves
| through them is powerful.
|
| Writer Haruki Murakami, a distance runner, was asked by an
| interviewer what we thinks about when he runs. Murakami
| responded that he basically doesn't think of anything. He
| runs not to think, but to _not_ think. That He runs
| specifically to create a void. (from his book "What I Talk
| About When I Talk About Running")
|
| I would also encourage anyone who hasn't experienced this
| before: find an activity that demands this from you. You
| will learn a lot about yourself.
| t_mahmood wrote:
| I love both cycling and walking. But cycling is what gave me
| the best of all.
|
| Riding for 7-8 hours even once a week just gave me a boost
| that would let me cope with everything that I had to face in
| daily life, and now after I've diagnosed with ADHD, I realize
| it was also helped me a lot to keep myself somewhat sorted.
| It's kinda therapy for me.
|
| It's relaxing, and clams the racing mind so much.
|
| Now I don't get a chance to ride anymore, but I miss it so
| much. And I feel ADHD affects me more now
| hnuser123456 wrote:
| I think the intention is to not even try to identify solutions,
| or even identify problems. If you're opening this page on your
| computer or phone, presumably, you have nothing 100% critical
| pressing right now. Now take it to the extreme, and see if you
| can quiet your brain for a minute or so. Walking is not as
| "pure nothing" as sitting and letting your brain wander
| anywhere as long as it's not reminding you of obligation
| stress. You might even start to daydream a pleasant setting.
| frakt0x90 wrote:
| I agree but I need to find an alternative. I live in texas
| unfortunately and walking is miserable for 4 months out of the
| year. I should just move but can't currently.
| theultdev wrote:
| The weather is perfect right now, take advantage!
|
| Also it's perfect most of our "winter", unlike many places
| where it snows / gets too cold.
|
| No place other than California will have perfect weather all
| year, but then you live in California...
|
| During the summer my wife and I run inside, or very early in
| the morning outside.
| seadan83 wrote:
| Interesting you mention walking as what our ancestors did.
| Until about 100 years ago, food and energy scarcity was the
| norm. Our ancestors would have been lean and would not have
| typically expended energy for just pure leisure. In other
| words, everyone was busy trying to not starve. There was plenty
| of physical activity in the day, lots of chores and things to
| do.
|
| I say this to demonstrate how un-adapted we are now for what is
| relatively recently a radically different lifestyle.
| lainga wrote:
| Petrarch climbed a mountain for fun in 1336.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascent_of_Mont_Ventoux
| seadan83 wrote:
| My summary statement saying "everyone" should be taken into
| context rather than strawmanned. Fwiw, and also across most
| of europe in a similar time period: "The Great Famine of
| 1315-1317 (occasionally dated 1315-1322) was the first of a
| series of large-scale crises that struck parts of Europe
| early in the 14th century. Most of Europe (extending east
| to Poland and south to the Alps) was affected." [1]
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_of_1315
| noncoml wrote:
| The peripatetic school of Aristotle. ~335BC
|
| Take walks to stimulate the mind
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peripatetic_school
| groby_b wrote:
| Thoreau, Humboldt, Goethe, Descartes. da Vinci, St. Francis
| of Assisi, Hildegard of Bingen, Li Bai, Seneca, Socrates
|
| Yes, it wasn't as affordable in earlier times, but thinking
| and walking have been closely associated for millenia.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| Most of those names strike me as particularly affluent or
| benefitting from a rich sponsor. Which does not really
| contradict the original point that majority of the
| population were focused on survival.
| throaway89 wrote:
| They're still somebody's ancestors!
| saghm wrote:
| Yeah, Thoreau in particular didn't really "live off the
| land" when writing Walden; his mother came to do his
| laundry for him.
| groby_b wrote:
| "Yes, it wasn't as affordable in earlier times,"
|
| Thinking in peace and quiet was indeed a luxury in past
| times.
|
| That doesn't mean there isn't a long tradition of walking
| if you needed to think. And that was the core point of OP
| - not that the majority was focused on survival, but that
| supposedly thinking and walking are a new relationship,
| previously impossible. And they really aren't. (Even as a
| subsistence farmer, you occasionally have to think, and
| doing that during a walk is a pretty common approach)
| nativeit wrote:
| "We're here on this Earth to fart around, don't let anybody
| tell you different."
|
| ~ Kurt Vonnegut
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| This is not supported by anthropological facts in the
| slightest.
|
| First of all, the argument conflates hunter gatherers,
| nomadic tribes, and farming societies. The mean and variance
| in food supply in all three across the world and time varied
| quite a bit. Were the numbers so bad uniformly that people
| had no time for leisure activity!?!
|
| Across history, there is evidence of people having huge
| celebratory festivals, involving excess food, dancing, and
| other rituals. People have been building for thousands of
| years humongous temples and pyramids and other structures
| requiring decades of continuous work, most of them without
| slave labor but voluntarily. Spending significant part of the
| day praying to the gods has also been the hallmark of humans.
| Do any of these strike you as low energy activities?
|
| Or take a look at biology. Most animals with some
| intelligence spends a non-trivial amount of its time in play.
| Why would humans not?
| wrycoder wrote:
| Do what humans usually did - hunt some dinner, hang around,
| maybe go aggravate the neighboring tribe a bit, if you're
| feeling feisty.
| seadan83 wrote:
| How do you hunt for dinner in a cold winter? I appreciate
| your glibness, I was equally glib when I wrote "everyone"
| seadan83 wrote:
| Not in the very slightest? Didn't most early american
| colonies die of starvation and disease?
|
| I feel you completely discounted this: "Our ancestors would
| have been lean and would not have typically expended energy
| for just pure leisure." And instead responded to only the
| following simplification as if it were an absolute point:
| "In other words, everyone was busy trying to not starve"
|
| Though, let us both stop nitpicking. It is hard to convey
| the full nuance, particularly when tapping this out on a
| phone.
|
| In fairness, I did conflate a few concepts and did not
| convey some nuance. Though my point that humans are not
| adapted for our current lifestyle remains.
|
| (1) serfs were not voluntarily lifting weights for leisure.
|
| (2) humans were not historically jacked. They were lean.
| They looked like thru-hikers, or marathon runners. It is
| the reason why having fat was a beauty standard. Onky the
| rich could have that many excess calories and not be M tan
| from working. The body does not choose to put on
| unnecessary levels of muscle without training and constant
| nutrition
|
| I did not mean to convey as was read into my statements
| that humans did zero leisure. It is an absurd claim.
| Though, running a marathon for the hell of it is likely
| well out of the cards for most people, particularly in a
| winter climate. To which my point, the need to go for
| intentional walks was less than what it is today. Not zero,
| but less.
|
| As for the conflation, the lack of nutrition was
| particularly salient in WWII when most Americans were not
| getting enough calories.
|
| "LeBlanc argues that the U.S. military's interest in
| nutrition research exploded in the 1940s, after it began
| seeking healthy recruits to deploy in World War II and
| found a male population physically weakened by years of
| malnutrition during the Great Depression." [1]
|
| Celebrating during a harvest makes sense. A lot of that
| food is liable to go bad. It is a time of plenty,in
| contrast to long winters before canning was invented.
|
| My point is the need for recreational leisure amongst
| adults was less than compared to present day in "post
| industrial countries" for two reasons: (1) substance living
| intrinsically involves physical activity. (2) food
| scarcity. Yeah, it is easy to strawman my argument as if
| there was no excess expenditure of energy. I'll re-iterate
| my point is that subsistance living is not conducive to a
| lot of excess calorie expenditure. Second to that, the
| number of people who were at a subsistence level was
| historically far higher. Third, a lifestyle where time is
| measured more in months and seasons, where one needs to do
| "everything" manually - is fundamentally different then the
| lifestyles of today (where with $100, today you can eat as
| well as did the King of France)
|
| [1] https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2019/01/historian-
| traces-m...
| olalonde wrote:
| Showers also tend to be effective.
| 331c8c71 wrote:
| I find that cold showers are magic for clearing my mind.
| 331c8c71 wrote:
| Maybe walking will work for me when I am older but it is not
| intense enough now. Cycling seems to be perfect as the scenery
| changes much faster and there is more opportunity to challenge
| myself (;
| thoutsnark wrote:
| Try walking while carrying a heavy load.
| andai wrote:
| That's just regular walking. Life is hard!
| javier123454321 wrote:
| 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.
| dietlbomb wrote:
| This reminds me of "Don't Shoot the Puppy".
| https://www.addictinggames.com/funny/dont-shoot-the-puppy
| frabjoused wrote:
| It's an excellent detail that the nothing timer resets if you
| scroll down to read the copy.
| chrsw wrote:
| Bug or feature? I couldn't resist scolling to read the rest of
| the message and my timer reset!
| layer8 wrote:
| What happens after 999?
| ramshanker wrote:
| 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!
| lawrenceyan wrote:
| This is a great intro to meditation.
|
| Meet people where they are, and make it as easy as possible to
| start doing something
| danbruc wrote:
| 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.
| tompark wrote:
| Fwiw, you can cheat on mobile Safari by scrolling in reader
| mode, which doesn't reset the timer.
| Minor49er wrote:
| The fact that you describe the act of missing a site's self-
| described "pointless statistics" as "punishment" screams
| volumes about our current state. The point is to do what it
| says, which may involve not even looking at the screen
| whatsoever
|
| "There is no reward for lingering. Just the pleasure of simple
| being."
|
| If you're looking for something that rewards you for doing
| nothing on the other hand, your favorite IRC server probably
| has an #idleRPG channel to join
| musha68k wrote:
| Josef Pieper moment - good reminder to read "Leisure, the Basis
| of Culture" again.
| jp57 wrote:
| 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.
|
| - Thomas Merton, _The Way of Chuang-Tzu_
| iammjm wrote:
| 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
| ranprieur wrote:
| Nice idea. We need a technology that doesn't just look at mouse
| movement to help you do nothing, but reads your brainwaves.
| silleknarf wrote:
| This exists! You can use the mediation measurements on a
| Neurosky Mindwave [1] to measure when you're thinking of
| nothing.
|
| I wrote an app with a friend about 10 years ago where we used
| the headset and the python mindwave library [2]. The app
| displays a longer and longer spiral on screen when you aren't
| thinking about anything.
|
| [1] The headset seems to still exist in some form:
| https://store.neurosky.com/pages/mindwave [2]
| https://github.com/faturita/python-mindwave
| tonymet wrote:
| 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.
| javier123454321 wrote:
| I'll grant you this. Meditation in the modern secular context
| which is devoid of its philosophical undercurrent, done in
| absence of an experienced teacher that has achieved the goal
| can lead to the pitfalls you describe.
|
| Meditation is a tool, and it can be pointed to many aims.
| Without the right aims, it can lead you to reinforce things you
| don't want to like you describe. It can also lead you to
| dissociate, or to exacerbate latent neurosis. However, it can
| also be a life affirming method for being more present and less
| hung up on the vicissitudes of the anxiety producing nature of
| an impermanent world. It takes wisdom to use it for the latter.
| tonymet wrote:
| I agree. I am referring to "pop" meditation, "mindfulness",
| clinical meditation, what you get at workplaces -- i.e. the
| "thinking about nothing" meditation promoted by this webpage.
|
| I'm calling attention to value, virtue, beauty, etc. Someone
| who is telling you that prayer is bad while meditation is
| good, or that religion is bad while secular mindfulness is
| good -- they are telling you to focus on yourself instead of
| something or someone else.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| I can do that when I'm dead.
| why-el wrote:
| also covered by the great philosopher Bertrand Russell:
| https://harpers.org/archive/1932/10/in-praise-of-idleness/.
| swayvil wrote:
| But what about the ten-thousand invisible habits? You could be
| engaged in furious activity right now and not even know it.
| marknutter wrote:
| I lasted about 10 seconds before I gave into the irresistible
| urge to read the comments about this on HN.
| squidsoup wrote:
| Frankly, I'd rather do Everything at zombo.com
| chasing wrote:
| 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.
| s4tr2 wrote:
| This is amazing, it amazes me how some people are able to take
| the simplest idea and put it out. Amazing, kudos
| gigatexal wrote:
| What is is about this site? The style or whatever it is, is
| seemingly calming. Love it.
| 10000truths wrote:
| Pinch-to-zoom on a MacBook touchpad did not trigger a reset of
| the idle timer.
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