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Entrepreneurs live in a perpetual state of "too many", whether that’s too many deadlines, too many ideas competing for attention, or too many tabs open both literally and mentally.
We convince ourselves that productivity means constant motion, but what if the answer to our chronic overwhelm isn’t another productivity hack or a better time management system?
What if the black void of nothing we’ve been running from our whole lives is the answer? Brené Brown wrote something that makes me think it just might be:
“There is growing evidence that the antidote to overwhelm appears to be nothingness or non-doing time.”
Brown has trained herself to couple the terms “overwhelm” and “do-nothing,” telling herself, “I’m overwhelmed, and I need 10–15 minutes of non-doing...”
…or as my friend Portia Jackson Preston says “If I finish my tasks I will take a break because I earned it, and if I don’t then I will take a break because I need it.”
Basically, embrace the nothing, y’all.
We’ve all been overwhelmed by the work we need to do, yet paralyzed from doing it. We respond by forcing ourselves to sit there longer, as if sheer stubbornness will crack the creative code, but it never does.
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The idea of non-doing isn’t about giving up, being passive, or checking out of your life. It’s about releasing the frantic need to force everything into place.
In mindfulness, non-doing is the disciplined practice of simply being with your experience instead of trying to fix it, optimize it, or turn it into something else.
If you want to go even further, a study in the Journal of Positive Psychology found that a strong predictor of living a great life is the concept of amor fati, which extends beyond simply accepting your experiences into actively loving whatever comes your way, no matter how bad it might seem.
When you stop pushing, even for a moment, you create space for clarity to emerge on its own terms.
If “doing nothing” sounds impossible, maybe “The Sacred Pause” that Dr. Tara Brach talks about in Radical Acceptance would feel better for you. This pause is all about catching our emotions as they bubble up, accepting them for what they are, and letting them pass through us.
Our minds aren’t machines. They’re complex ecosystems that require rest, space, and “non-doing.”
Non-doing doesn’t mean laziness or avoidance. It’s not collapsing onto the couch for a Netflix binge (though no judgment if that’s what you need sometimes). Non-doing is the deliberate practice of stopping productive activity without replacing it with another task.
This might look like:
- Sitting on your porch without your phone.
- Walking around the block without trying to “figure out” a solution to your problem.
- Staring out the window without guilt.
- Lying on the floor and watching the ceiling fan.
- Standing in your backyard, doing absolutely nothing.
The key is removing both the doing and the guilt about not doing.
The guilt knowledge workers feel is a special kind of torture. Unlike many professions, our productivity isn’t measured in tasks completed but in something far more elusive.
We’re judged not just by words, but by words that work, stories that resonate, and arguments that hold together. You can spend eight hours at your desk and do nothing usable…
…or you can spend fifteen minutes in a flow state and produce your best work in months.
This type of unpredictability creates a special kind of overwhelm.
We can’t simply “power through” every problem the way we might power through a pile of invoices. The creative mind doesn’t respond well to force.
What it does respond to is space.
Our brains have two distinct modes:
- the task-positive network (focused, goal-oriented thinking)
- the default mode network (wandering, associative thinking)
When you’re overwhelmed, you’re stuck in task-positive mode, spinning your wheels. The engine is revving, but you’re going nowhere.
Non-doing gives your default mode network permission to do its job.
This is why your best ideas often come in the shower, on walks, or in that liminal space between sleep and waking. Your brain was working in a different way, making connections that focused thinking couldn’t reach.
Training yourself to do nothing
For most of us, our default response to overwhelm is more effort. We double down, stay up later, and even cancel plans to sit at our desks longer, as if punishment will unlock productivity.
Breaking that pattern requires practice. Here’s how to begin:
