The Joy of Doing Nothing

“What’s the rush?”
In Singapore, doing nothing feels illegal.

If you sit too long, even your own conscience will ask, “Are you sure you shouldn’t be doing something?” If you tell people you spent the afternoon doing nothing, they look at you the way they look at an MRT breakdown. Concerned. Slightly judgmental. Quietly disappointed.

I know this because I am one of those people. Give me five spare minutes and I will try to turn it into a life upgrade. Check messages. Clear emails. Learn something. Optimize something. Rest, but efficiently. Even my “me time” used to come with a mental spreadsheet.

Then one day, I found myself sitting at a kopitiam, kopi in hand, phone face down, doing absolutely nothing. Not even pretending to think deep thoughts. Just watching the auntie wipe tables with the speed of a Formula One pit crew. Watching office workers power-walk like they were late for a national exam. Watching pigeons negotiate territory like tiny landlords.

And nothing bad happened.

In fact, something strange happened. My shoulders dropped. My breathing slowed. My mind stopped behaving like a browser with forty tabs open, all playing sound. For the first time in a long while, I wasn’t rushing the moment to get to the next one.

Doing nothing in Singapore is not meditation. It’s standing at the bus stop and not checking the arrival time every ten seconds. It’s sitting on the MRT and looking out the window instead of into your phone. It’s sitting under a void deck, feeling the afternoon wind, and not feeling guilty about it.

We live in a place where efficiency is a national sport. Queues are optimized. Processes are refined. Even our food courts run like logistics hubs. Somewhere along the way, we absorbed the idea that if we are not productive, we are falling behind.

But here’s the irony. When you stop trying to squeeze value out of every minute, your mind starts giving value back. Ideas drift in unannounced. Problems soften. You remember that you are a person, not a project.

Doing nothing is not being lazy. It is letting your nervous system catch up with your calendar. It is allowing space between tasks so your brain doesn’t permanently live in rush hour.

So the next time you find yourself with a few quiet minutes, don’t panic. Don’t reach for your phone like it’s a life raft. Sit there. Drink your kopi slowly. Let the city rush past you for once.

So if you see me sitting quietly with my kopi, staring into space, don’t worry. I’m not lost. I’m not tired. I’m just practicing the underrated skill of doing nothing.

credit: Sebastian Chen for the topic.

PS I write books too. They live here:
https://payhip.com/samchoo