HOW TO DO NOTHING

Many people have asked me, Medha, what do you do in your free time? 10% of the time, I respond with "Nothing". But how can I do literally nothing? There has to be something that I am doing. No. I do nothing. But it isn't as easy as sitting around, staring at paint dry. It is an art that not anyone can understand, or has the determination to.

It had all started with when I was in elementary school. On a Summer Saturday evening, I had just turned on the fan to drown out the heat with the cool breeze generated from it, but something felt... off. There was nothing to do. But I couldn't just do literally nothing, could I? So I did everything I could to entertain myself, but it didn't help. That was until.... I had an epiphany. How about I just do... nothing!

It had taken me years to perfect but there is a formula to get the optimal experience out of doing nothing. It was through this technique that many countless days were passed without a problem.

There a few things that you need to get before relaxing:

• A couch
• A drink (water, coke, etc.)
• Straws
• A device that can play audio (Optional)
• Headphones (Optional)

This step is much more complex than initially presented. There are a number of variables that come into play when considering the ideal drink for your situation. However, don't worry, I have a process that can filter out what kind of drink fits your needs.

1. What temperature is it where your relaxing?
   Temperature is usually determined by season so if it's winter and cold, a hot drink like hot chocolate would be an optimal choice for relaxing
2. Do you have enough?
   The last thing you want from your drink when relaxing is that your un out of your drink. This is a major problem when considering using drinking from soft drinks due to their property of making you more thirsty when drinking them, so be careful that you bring extra when choosing them. You don't want to get up when your relaxing.

Once you get through those two steps, you can pick out your drink from the pool of options. Make sure to bring straws as well, don't want to strain your neck too much to reach your cup so get the extra long ones to minimize effort.

This is optional if you don't want to bring one, or just want to listen to the sounds of nature or something. But I would highly recommend getting one since you can listen to a plethora of audio's from different sources, like music, or podcasts, etc. It will definitely help you keep your mind off of things and isolate you so you can relax. To make this more immersive, I would also recommend headphones so you can filter out other sounds and get the best audio quality.

This is also an optional step, however it will exponentially improve your mental health and relieve the stress on your mind knowing that you don't have anything going on. Once you get more experienced at doing nothing then you can naturally block out this stress when relaxing, but during the initial stages, it helped me knowing that I could relax without anything going on.

This is the easiest, and hardest step of all of them. I even still have trouble when it comes to this step. The real challenge with this step has nothing to do with how well you did the previous steps, but with you yourself. Getting on the couch and finding a comfortable position is all luck. While the couch does matter, it mostly matters on how you feel in certain positions. If you can't get this step down then it will feel somewhat uncomfortable when relaxing for any amount of time after. A tip to finding the right position is never lay your head flat, keep it against something or on top of it, like a pillow.

This is the easiest step so far. With all of the preparation of the previous steps, we can finally start ot relax. Keep the drink on the floor, on the same line as your head and within arms reach without bending your elbow. The table is a secondary option if the floor isn't available, but the floor is the best place to put it. If you brought it, keep your phone on your stomach or near you belly button with your headphones connected. If you have wireless headphones, you can either put it on your stomach or away from you like a table or floor, but within arms reach. Just make sure to be wary of tipping over your drink onto your phone; I recommend putting the device away from your drink to prevent this from happening

Good luck in doing nothing!