15 ms·
Nothing: Simply Do Nothing
- 1970-01-01 2y agoI can do that when I'm dead.
- knowitnone 2y agoyou do nothing while I use your CPU to mine crypto. thanks
- TeaVMFan 2y agoIntriguing. Perhaps adding focus gained detection with a timer reset would increase the motivation to do nothing.
- tourmalinetaco 2y agoI 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 2y agoThat’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/5402ae06169c67bdfa8b675c6c122bc798518da2/src/components/app/app.tsx#L58 https://github.com/remvze/nothing/blob/5402ae06169c67bdfa8b6...
- ok_dad 2y agoThat’s a lot of text for nothing.
- makeitdouble 2y agoI 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 2y agoBuddhism, son!
- bschmidt1 2y agoBreathing 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 2y ago> 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 2y agoI 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).
- spiffytech 2y agoI've enjoyed using Sit, which is similar in spirit: https://sonnet.io/posts/sit/ https://sonnet.io/posts/sit/
- akira2501 2y ago> 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 2y agoIt doesn't reset when I alt+tab
- madpen 2y agoNeat! 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 2y agoWas it hard to switch perspective?
- madpen 2y agoYes, it’s definitely an ongoing process for me!
- eleveriven 2y agoKeep going!
- DaoVeles 2y agoReally 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 2y agoI really do think it’s more a message / a sort or artistic expression, than an app :)
- edweis 2y agoLooking at the source code, I have never seen so many files for such a simple HTML page.
- abdusco 2y agoAstro[0]: wrong tool for this job. https://astro.build/ https://astro.build/
- skrebbel 2y agoI assume the author is good at quickly whipping stuff up with Astro, which makes it an excellent tool for the job.
- rpigab 2y agoI'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 2y agoI 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/f46725d3e9e9d055da40b3de4b3a3232 https://gist.github.com/lifthrasiir/f46725d3e9e9d055da40b3de...
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- archargelod 2y agoReally 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/d121ae5377a0d09b0133b7b016973a1b https://gist.github.com/Archargelod/d121ae5377a0d09b0133b7b0...
- shahzaibmushtaq 2y agoDoing nothing gets nothing in return, forget about easing your mind.
- sans_souse 2y agoI was expecting an xyzzy reference.
- sys42590 2y agoThat 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8An2SxNFvmU [Do Nothing - a message of motivation from Self-help Singh- (un) motivational speaker and life coach]
- zingerlio 2y agoI relate so much to his recent video on Friday meetings.
- eleveriven 2y agoHumor can often make such profound messages more accessible and memorable...
- bko 2y agoWhat 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 2y agoBut 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 2y agoThat 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!
- 2y ago
- yetihehe 2y ago> 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 2y agoCould we get a leaderboard feature
- GrumpyNl 2y agoThis 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 2y agoI don't get it. What is the difference between this website and the rest of the internet?
- mlukaszek 2y agoMissed 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 2y agoAnd a list of people doing nothing together with you.
- mipsi 2y agoAnd even when intentionally doing nothing, there is some obscure desire to measure how much nothing we are actually doing. Hence the idle counter.
- thinkingemote 2y agoThere'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 2y agoUtilitarianism 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 2y agoWhat 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 https://www.investopedia.com/terms/u/utilitarianism.asp
- 2y ago
- phtrivier 2y agoFor 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 2y agoThe essence of stepping away from the relentless pace of modern life. But sometimes it is so hard to do nothing
- noobermin 2y agoGenerally 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 2y agoThere'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 2y agoAh yes, raw dogging.
- kranner 2y agoThis 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.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/17/style/rawdog-flights-term...
- saberience 2y agoDysphemism 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"
- yqtjnvou 2y agoThis 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 2y agoWhy 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 2y agoLove 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 2y agoYeah 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 2y agoYou 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
- jerrygoyal 2y agoin other words, DMN got activated.
- systems_glitch 2y ago"You don't need a million dollars to do nothin. Take a look at my cousin, he's broke don't do shit."
- Tade0 2y agoI have had a page for just that for years now: https://zombo.com/ https://zombo.com/
- morningsam 2y agoBefore clicking, I thought this was going to be the next step in the evolution of "frameworks" like http://vanilla-js.com/ http://vanilla-js.com/
- ivolimmen 2y agoI was hoping that it would crash over the 900 seconds but it still worked.
- nrvn 2y agoBrilliant. Reminds me of https://github.com/kelseyhightower/nocode https://github.com/kelseyhightower/nocode but for general public. Sometimes to get an idea of something you should simply stop thinking.
- andrewingram 2y agoInterestingly, http://www.donothingfor2minutes.com/ http://www.donothingfor2minutes.com/ eventually morphed into Calm
- johnchristopher 2y agoJoke's on you, I got depression and that counter only goes up to rookie numbers. /meme :)
- rpastuszak 2y agoAlong similar lines, I built Sit (https://sit.sonnet.io 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+–+Space+Kalimba https://untested.sonnet.io/Sit.%2C+(together)+devlog+002+–+S...
- guerrilla 2y agoUnfortunately for you, resting leads to increased productivity. Sucker!
- rpastuszak 2y agoGoddammit!
- podgorniy 2y agoI'm dissatisfied with "Nothing". I need "Noting+" for 5.99 eur per month. Or give me at least couple advertisements to look at.
- anilakar 2y agoIf you gamify doing nothing, is doing nothing actually the same as actively playing the game?
- falcor84 2y agoExactly. It's the same as using one of those meditation apps with gamification elements.
- InDubioProRubio 2y ago? 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 2y agoI 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 2y agoI can't really use a phone outside on a sunny day. Even at max brightness the screen is unreadable.
- my_brain_saying 2y agoThis 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.
- javier123454321 2y agoI 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 2y agoThis reminds me of "Don't Shoot the Puppy". https://www.addictinggames.com/funny/dont-shoot-the-puppy https://www.addictinggames.com/funny/dont-shoot-the-puppy
- frabjoused 2y agoIt’s an excellent detail that the nothing timer resets if you scroll down to read the copy.
- chrsw 2y agoBug or feature? I couldn't resist scolling to read the rest of the message and my timer reset!
- layer8 2y agoWhat happens after 999?
- ramshanker 2y agoLoved 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!
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- lawrenceyan 2y agoThis is a great intro to meditation. Meet people where they are, and make it as easy as possible to start doing something
- danbruc 2y agoI 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 2y agoFwiw, you can cheat on mobile Safari by scrolling in reader mode, which doesn't reset the timer.
- Minor49er 2y agoThe 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 2y agoJosef Pieper moment - good reminder to read "Leisure, the Basis of Culture" again.
- eimrine 2y agoThank you for recommendation I have finished it today.
- jp57 2y agoThe 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 2y agoI 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
- backspin1472 2y agoYep, happens to me the instant I get bored or - do nothing.
- ranprieur 2y agoNice idea. We need a technology that doesn't just look at mouse movement to help you do nothing, but reads your brainwaves.
- silleknarf 2y agoThis 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 https://store.neurosky.com/pages/mindwave [2] https://github.com/faturita/python-mindwave https://github.com/faturita/python-mindwave
- tonymet 2y agoMeditation 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 2y agoI'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 2y agoI 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.
- why-el 2y agoalso covered by the great philosopher Bertrand Russell: https://harpers.org/archive/1932/10/in-praise-of-idleness/ https://harpers.org/archive/1932/10/in-praise-of-idleness/.
- swayvil 2y agoBut what about the ten-thousand invisible habits? You could be engaged in furious activity right now and not even know it.
- marknutter 2y agoI lasted about 10 seconds before I gave into the irresistible urge to read the comments about this on HN.
- squidsoup 2y agoFrankly, I’d rather do Everything at zombo.com
- chasing 2y agoOkay, 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 2y agoThis is amazing, it amazes me how some people are able to take the simplest idea and put it out. Amazing, kudos
- gigatexal 2y agoWhat is is about this site? The style or whatever it is, is seemingly calming. Love it.
- 10000truths 2y agoPinch-to-zoom on a MacBook touchpad did not trigger a reset of the idle timer.
- 1-2-3-5-8 2y agoIt is hard for me to pinpoint what actually happened, but I felt happy just looking at the page for about a minute.
- leiaru13 2y agoSensory deprivation tanks are also great for this. No distractions or to-do's, just you and your thoughts for an hour.
- xandrius 2y agoUnless someone has a condition, I'd say that going out in nature and practicing doing nothing is more beneficial and low-tech.
- ychnd 2y agoIf you do, don't.
- raindropm 2y agoFunny how HN always find a way to be critical on virtually EVERYTHING. :p I think it's brilliant site, you visit the site or share it with someone, read the text, it make you feel grounded and even spark something inside you that you forget in the busy day. Walking is cool, but it's definitely different from be still and doing nothing. Sometimes you go to walk, but your mind still racing from all the things that you want to escape, which doesn't help at all, because the point of all this is doing NOTHING, yes, even daydreaming. Your just lightly aware of your mind and self in the now, and that's all, no thought, just like meditation.