Doing absolutely nothing doesn’t really happen today. It’s so rare that we’ve given periods of doing nothing names like ‘bed-rotting’ and ‘raw-dogging’. As if by giving it a name, doing nothing is still doing something.
All the idle moments that we used to have before smartphones arrived have pretty much vanished. We used to let our mind wander when we were in a queue, waiting for a bus, cooking dinner, on the train. Now, any moment we have to spare we tend to fill it with being ‘productive’ or scrolling.
Busyness has been equated to success: the more you do, the more you achieve. So when we can work from anywhere and send emails at any time of the day, it’s easy to feel like you should be being productive in every spare hour. Pair this with social media celebrating hustle culture, where being busy is glamourised, it can leave us feeling guilty for resting if we haven’t worked our socks off first.
Even our rest days and personal time feels like a how-busy-are-you competition thanks to social media. Algorithms serve us videos of packed weekends and early morning workouts that can make our quieter moments feel inadequate…If we’re not doing anything, or simply resting, are we behind?
But what if we’ve got it all wrong? What if resting and boredom is actually something we should be striving for?
We chatted with Joseph Jebelli, a neuroscientist and the author of Brain at Rest (that you’ll find on the shelves of all Unplugged cabins), who believes we've got work and rest the wrong way round. Rest isn't what you earn once the work is done. It's where the work comes from. We asked Joseph ten questions that might just change how you think about rest.
What's really happening in the brain when we do nothing?
The default network, otherwise known as your resting brain network, becomes highly active. And we now know that when you activate your default network with rest, you improve your intelligence, creativity, memory, problem-solving abilities, emotional processing, and so much more. It can even reduce your risk of developing neurological illnesses including depression and dementia. So when you're staring out of the window apparently doing nothing, your brain is actually doing a lot of something.
Why do our best ideas arrive in the shower or on a walk?
Partly it's because that's when we're no longer forcing an answer. Solitude is great for this – it frees the default network to mind wander and connect ideas you didn't consider before. And going for a walk, especially in green space, actually changes your default network brain waves – from busy and anxious 'beta' waves to daydreaming and creative 'alpha' waves and even meditative 'theta' waves. The knock-on effect is that spending time in a forest improves creativity and problem-solving ability by 50 percent, and memory recall by 20 percent, irrespective of the weather. Walking even modifies our skeletal muscles, causing them to secrete molecules called myokines ('hope molecules'), which cross the blood-brain barrier and act as an antidepressant.
Why does taking time to rest make us feel so guilty?
Because we live in a society obsessed with overwork and busyness. This leads to 'productivity guilt', where you equate your worth and value as a human being with your economic output. This then leads to 'overgeneralised guilt': that nagging sense that you're never doing enough, which can then lead to anxiety and depression. The irony is that this is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the brain. We still think that when we rest, the brain powers down like a muscle that's stopped working, when in fact the complete opposite is true – the brain is powering up when we rest.
Can doing nothing really affect your health?
Yes, in a very positive way. The best way to think about this is to consider what happens when we don't rest: globally, overwork causes 745,000 deaths a year, a 29 percent increase since 2000; three in five employees now report a lack of interest, motivation, and energy, a 38 percent increase since 2019; and in the brain, overwork thins the frontal cortex in the same way that aging does – it literally makes the brain older than it is. Psychologically, overwork progress from dissatisfaction and exhaustion to cynicism, emotional detachment, anxiety and depression – and it can take your brain up to three years to recover, returning to baseline performance on cognitive tests. I would argue that we are all somewhere along that three-year spectrum. Crucially, rest can reverse much of this, improving your brain health in ways we are only just beginning to understand.
Does scrolling and/or Netflix count as rest?
I'm afraid not. Screens masquerade as rest because they are a distraction from the work you were just doing. But they aren't true rest for the brain – true rest is things like walks in nature, staring out the window, napping, mind wandering, all of which activate your default network.
Is there much difference between taking breaks and sleeping?
Yes. They overlap, but they do different jobs. A waking break gives your executive, task-focused brain a chance to ease off and allows the default network to become more active, which is very useful for reflection, creativity, and problem-solving. Sleep does something a little different – it consolidates memories, processes emotions, and clears away metabolic waste that accumulates while you're awake. So you can't compensate for poor sleep by taking lots of breaks, and you can't get all the benefits of waking rest simply by sleeping. A healthy brain needs both.
Is there an ideal length of time that we should spend resting?
As a general rule, the more time you spend doing nothing, the better it is for your brain. But there are some useful specifics. Around 20 minutes a day in green space, for instance, is very good for your brain and its default network. A 30-minute nap each day can actually enlarge your brain by around 15 cubic centimetres – the volume of a small plum. And simply staring into space for 10–20 minutes, letting your mind wander, can boost default network activity and support creativity, memory and more.
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Where do you start if you can't sit still without reaching for your phone?
Baby steps. First, I always think it's good to put your phone in another room. I put mine in a kitchen drawer in the evening sometimes. Then try just 5 or 10 minutes of doing nothing. Sit somewhere comfortable and stare out of the window. It's amazing how, when people do this, they expect it to be boring, but often say after just a few minutes of true rest how edifying and rewarding it is, and how much better and less anxious they feel.
What changed for you once you started taking rest seriously?
My health has improved dramatically. I sleep better. My memory and concentration have improved. I'm ill less often. And I feel much less anxious. I'm also more creative, I write more fluidly, and I'm able to solve problems in ways I never could when I overworked.
If we only remember one thing tomorrow, what should it be?
That we have our understanding of work and rest completely upside down. Rest, not work, is the true driver of your best work and long-term productivity. It is during rest that your brain activates the default network – which comprises 20% of your brain, compared to just 5% for your work-orientated brain network – allowing you to be at your most creative, to remember better and to solve problems more effectively. Rest, not work, is the secret to sustained productivity. That's the central message of the book: that if you want your brain to work at its best, you have to become much better at doing nothing.
So if you’re as convinced as we are that we should be resting more (and working less), then we might know of a great place to do that. You can see all our cabins here. And if you want to read more about your brain at rest, check out Joseph’s book here.