Our new sweatshirt, hoodie and sweatpants drop isn’t just for training, travel, or coffee runs. It’s for the pause between them.
Made for comfort and the discipline of doing absolutely nothing.
People assume doing nothing is easy. It’s not.
At least, not for readers of The Habitual Journal—those caffeinated, creatine-laced, self-optimizing seekers who tackle the day like a to-do list. We’ve built an entire culture around motion, around chasing one more rep, one more idea, one more edge.
But much like peak fitness lives in the pause between sets, creativity lives in the quiet between thoughts.
Rest isn’t the absence of work—it’s the hidden half of it.
Because productivity, real productivity, lives in the balance—where the art of doing absolutely nothing becomes its own discipline.
They are not opposites, but mirror images: Motion and stillness, tension and release.
Both required. Both earned.
We’ve become so accustomed to drinking from the firehose of modern life that even in our downtime we’re stimulated. Doom-scrolling has replaced daydreaming; sitting on porcelain—once a rare sanctuary for private thought—is now just another scroll session.
Binging Netflix passes as “winding down.” Holidays? Not retreats from work, but work retreats with better cocktails and a different mattress.
Not to say the beach doesn’t bring clarity—but even there, the phone is never far, the urge to post, to share, to prove we’re resting well… It's still work, disguised as leisure.
Both miss the point entirely.
This is why doing nothing requires courage.
It takes restraint—more than ever before. We’ve been conditioned to believe simplicity is laziness, that stillness signals weakness. But it’s not. It’s courage. The courage to say no. Not today. Not this week. Maybe not this year. To trust that things will still be okay on the other side of the pause.
Silence and the space to enjoy it are now the rarest of luxuries in a world humming with white noise. Notifications, headlines, opinions — all clawing for a piece of your attention. But there’s another kind of quiet. The kind that invites you to make peace with the pause. Where do you find it? Where do you carve it from the rigid stone of life?
For some, it’s the walk without earbuds. For others, it’s an early morning coffee before the house wakes. For a few, it’s the discipline of stopping mid-stride just to breathe, to let the moment linger. Because the art of doing nothing isn’t a rejection of life — it’s a return to it.
A reminder that stillness, too, is an act of creation. This idea is central in ancient Chinese and Vedic philosophy, among others. Eckhardt Tolle teaches that true intelligence operates silently. Stillness is where creativity and solutions to problems are found.
In our world of daily challenges, finding stillness has always been essential for life. To truly rest, let your mind disengage and find the stillness that lets the mind do its mysterious work in the subconscious.
Because stillness too, is an act of creation.
Here's my reading list on the topic. I hope you find inspiration in the words.
Poems
1. Leisure W.H. Davies
“What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.”
A century old, but timeless. It's a meditation on presence and simplicity in a world obsessed with motion.
2. The Peace of Wild Things Wendell Berry
A poem that feels like a deep breath. Berry’s stillness isn’t escapism — it’s restoration through nature and quiet attention.
3. Sleeping in the Forest Mary Oliver
Oliver captures surrender beautifully — the idea of resting with the world, not just in it. It’s a spiritual kind of nothingness.
4. The Lake Isle of Innisfree W.B. Yeats
A classic poem of solitude and simplicity — the original “escape to nature” piece that inspired generations to crave silence and space.
5. Keeping Quiet Pablo Neruda
A poetic manifesto for stillness and collective pause: “If we were not so single-minded about keeping our lives moving…”
Essays
1. In Praise of Idleness Bertrand Russell
A philosophical cornerstone. Russell argues that civilization advances not by overwork, but by the creative space idleness allows.
2. On Idleness Michel de Montaigne
It's one of the first essays written, ever. It’s about how rest can create fertile ground for thought.
3. The Case for Doing Nothing Pico Iyer (Time Magazine / NYT)
Iyer writes with minimalist grace about travel, stillness, and finding meaning in the pause. A perfect match to Naked Revival’s ethos. Read his book The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere for Iyer's full take.
4. Why We Need to Sit on the Porch Brian Doyle
A short, reflective essay on simplicity, conversation, and how sitting still can become a ritual of connection.
5. On the Shortness of Life Seneca
Ancient stoic wisdom on time, attention, and intentional living. Doing nothing, in Seneca’s eyes, is not waste — it’s mastery.
Books
1. The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere Pico Iyer
A small but profound meditation on finding calm and creativity through inaction. Essential reading for this theme.
2. How to Do Nothing Jenny Odell
Modern, sharp, and socially aware. Odell reframes “doing nothing” as resistance to digital overwhelm and capitalist hyper-productivity.
3. The Idle Traveler Dan Kieran
A slow travel manifesto: journey for meaning, not miles. Think Naked Revival on the road.
4. Walden Henry David Thoreau
The classic on solitude, simplicity, and intentional living. Still feels rebellious.
5. Silence: In the Age of Noise Erling Kagge
Written by an explorer-philosopher who literally walked to the South Pole alone. Beautiful reflections on the sacredness of quiet.
6. Daily Rituals: How Artists Work Mason Currey
A look at how great thinkers used rhythm and rest — not just hustle — to create. Proof that pause fuels performance.
7. Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less Alex Soojung-Kim Pang
Scientific, but poetic. Makes the case that rest isn’t the opposite of work — it’s part of it.
