Time to Unplug and Listen to Yourself

Yes, it's a radical idea but a good one.

This week feels strangely different. I keep checking the calendar, trying to orient myself, and still I’m not quite sure what day it is. The new year has not yet arrived, and the days after Christmas exist in a soft in-between space where time loosens its grip. The rush is over. The lists have been completed—or abandoned—and the urgency that carried us through December has quietly slipped out the door.

And yet, I keep wondering if I’m supposed to be doing something. Preparing for something. Getting ready for what comes next. I can’t quite name what that should be.

We build our lives around overconsumption and constant motion. We fill every quiet moment with noise, advice, and improvement. We eat meals in front of the television. We walk while listening to someone tell us how to be better—healthier, thinner, more productive, more successful. Even rest comes with instructions now. Silence feels uncomfortable, almost indulgent.

We’re so accustomed to the next obligation, the next task, the constant hum of productivity. There’s always something to check off, improve, or move forward. When that structure disappears, I feel a low hum of guilt—an uneasiness that whispers I’m wasting time by not accomplishing something, not fixing something, not planning.

Why am I not preparing for anything?

There must be an art to doing nothing, but I’ve never been very good at it. I was raised—like so many of us—to believe that value is earned through effort. That stillness is laziness. That rest must be justified. But maybe I’m looking at this all wrong. Maybe doing nothing—the absence of productivity—isn’t empty at all. Maybe it’s full in a quieter way.

Perhaps it’s a gift to exist for a few days without a schedule. Without a goal beyond simply being present. Without needing to optimize the moment or turn it into something useful.

Is this what rest really looks like?

Maybe it’s reading a book simply because I want to—not because I should learn something from it or finish it by a certain time. I don’t even have to complete it. Maybe it’s taking a walk without a destination, without tracking steps or listening to a podcast, and just walking and feeling the air. Noticing my own thoughts as they come and go. Lifting weights can wait. Not now. Improvement can wait.

In the stillness, I begin to notice things I usually rush past. The way the ducks lift off from the water, wings wide and deliberate, gliding in slow circles before landing softly on the pond out back. The sound is gentle, almost ceremonial. The winter light hits the water just right, illuminating the surface until everything seems hushed and holy, as if the world itself has decided to pause.

Nothing is asking anything of me in those moments. And that feels both unsettling and profound.

Maybe this space—this pause—is not meant to be filled but to restore. Maybe it’s here to remind us that we are more than what we produce. That there is wisdom in stillness. That listening to ourselves, to the quiet, to the small ordinary beauty around us—is a form of nourishment we rarely allow.

This, I’m beginning to understand, is not wasted time.

It’s meant to be noticed - to restore.