A few days ago, I felt like just sitting and doing nothing. So I decided to just sit and have coffee. (I’m just realizing now that that’s not doing nothing! At least I didn’t open a book as well.) So I made coffee and sat down in the office on the sofa and tried to be in the moment. Here’s what I observed about this experience.

First, I was really excited to do something like this because I don’t really do it that often. The cult of productivity we’ve all been conditioned to follow makes us feel guilty when we’re not doing at least one thing. But for most of human history, humans have sat down and done nothing, for a major part of their life. And FYI doom scrolling on the phone is not ‘doing nothing’.

So I wanted to deliberately stop caring about productivity and efficiency and time and just sit down and be for a while without any agenda or goal. I enjoyed that part of it.

The Experience

I tried to focus on my senses. I looked out the window and saw the trees and looked for the birds and saw some birds and it felt good. I wondered if I should have sat outside in the garden perhaps. That would make the experience even better.

I tried to pay attention to what I was feeling. A little chilly breeze on my arms. I tried to smell the coffee but I couldn’t really do that because my sense of smell is quite weak. Then I tasted the coffee. It was hot and sweet and milky and coffee-ish.

But soon I began thinking about stuff. I began thinking about how such experiences are really what my philosophy leads to as a way of life. To fully experience the experiences you’re having. The irony is that I was not having the experience fully because I was thinking about how important it is to experience things fully.

Is Thinking Also An Experience?

But then I started wondering if this is just how I experience things. Different people experience things differently. I can guide my attention to my senses and the world but eventually I’ll be thinking about what I’m experiencing and that’s just what experiences are for me. And I did enjoy the thinking part of the experience too.

This idea that you’re only experiencing things fully if you’re not thinking might not be as correct as it seems. Sure, when you’re in flow doing an activity like playing a sport or playing an instrument you’re not thinking about the actions you’re doing. But are you completely thoughtless?

My intuition is that flow is like a gradient. At 100% flow you are thoughtless. But at 90% flow you’re still thinking a few things. You never think about how to play the instrument but you could be thinking thoughts like, “oh wow I really like what I did there”. You’re also not completely distracted and thinking about other things like what someone said or how much taxes you have to pay.

The Flow Vs Distraction Axis

Maybe flow vs distraction is an axis on which we exist. 100% distracted is when our eyes become unfocused and we’re not even aware of the physical reality around us and we’re completely inside our head. 100% flow is on the other end of the spectrum where we are completely in the moment in the physical world and not inside our head at all.

The goal should not be to always be in flow. That’s probably impossible. And we should definitely avoid always being distracted. But the main thing is to be able to move in and out of different flow states. It’s even okay to sometimes be distracted. Try to be at 50% flow or higher to experience things fully.

I’d say I was at 30% flow while having coffee. And then I was at 70% flow as a thinker. That’s another thing, not all experiences are singular things. You could be having multiple experiences simultaneously. You’re always having “the experience” as well as the experience of “experiencing the experience”. The experience is the immediate thing that you’re having but simultaneously your inner conscious self is having a different experience. It is experiencing what it feels like when you have that experience.

Say “Hi!” to the Second You

So there’s really two “You”s. The you who is in the world and doing things. And the you that is in the mind and is observing you doing things in the world. This inner you can control the physical you sometimes but not always. But both these “you”s have the experience. And 100% flow state is when the two become one. You’re instantly experiencing the physical world and the inner world and updating your actions accordingly.

So the purpose of life according to my philosophy is to choose the kind of experiences you want to have and try to have fuller experiences. It is not about optimizing or maximizing positive experiences or expect that you’ll never have any negative experiences. And sometimes, doing nothing can be a highly rewarding experience, if just to highlight the absurdity of our highspeed lifestyle.

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Cover Photo by Gennifer Miller on Unsplash