Baggage Check: The Nothing Effect

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Dr. Andrea Bonior dives into the world of psychology.

TODAY, AMIDST presidential primaries, W-2s, and a world in which caffeinated potato chips don't raise eyebrows, I'd like to pay tribute to the glory of doing nothing.

Yes, I'm talking about just laying down and channel-surfing until your mind is mush — perhaps experiencing the abject joy of stumbling across an E! True Hollywood Story on the First Daughters — or just noticing the crevices on your ceiling in a way you never have before.

This isn't the kind of idling that comes with surreptitiously playing computer Solitaire on the clock, or nervously completing that eBay purchase as you hear those footsteps outside of your cube. No, I'm talking about total R & R of the becoming-one-with-your couch kind, sans guilt or a sense of borrowed time.

It happens so rarely in our go-go-go culture, where even 3-year-olds have somewhere to be in 20 minutes and where stress appears to be an epidemic. Quite often, the way this comes about is through forced relaxation, mandated by injury or illness. But once you really get into it, the joy of spontaneous sloth can wash over you like a warm blanket — a simultaneously foreign and primordial sensation.

Why do we never give ourselves permission to totally veg out anymore? We frantically cram our vegging out into the times we're not supposed to be doing it, making sure that the guilt and fear of getting caught deny us the real goal of our relaxation. Maybe if we occasionally turned off the internal timers that seem to drive most of us from morning until night, our mental and physical health — and even our work productivity — would show significant improvement.

It's hard to be assertive about carving out time to unwind; after all, how would you notate "Contemplate which of my feet is bigger" on a Palm Pilot? But it's arguably a much better tactic to do so than to get so burnt out that our bodies call the timeout for us.

Talk back to Dr. Andrea by leaving a comment below. To ask a question for Baggage Check in the Express print edition, e-mail baggage@readexpress.com or submit an anonymous question here.