Mindfulness versus doing nothing in the olden days

[Platypusdiver]

Before smart phones, if we had nothing to do, we did nothing. Maybe read a book/newspaper or idle chat. But often we did literally nothing during many parts of the day.

I was wondering if we were getting the benefits of mindfulness just through everyday life. Or alternatively now, our brains are constantly working because we have unlimited distractions, and this is causing alot of mental health issues.

If I am not careful, my entire day is filled by distractions. Listening to podcasts when getting ready and driving to work, scrolling when waiting, reading the internet instead of even watching TV.

I used to read a book or the paper whilst waiting. I now read the paper on my phone.

I sometimes look over people's shoulder on the train to see what's so absorbing and almost always there is a whole lot of quickly opening up and closing various apps without doing anything. It looks like people are seeking the dopamine hit of a new message or something on social media that isn't just an ad. I recognise it because I do it myself at times. Phones have become an addiction for a lot of people.

It's not at all uncommon to see people walking down the street or even crossing the road staring at their phone the entire time. I saw someone walk into a lamppost once 😂

I don't think "doing nothing" has ever been socially acceptable in countries with a culture stamped with the Protestant work ethic (which is nothing to do with actual religion obviously, just a cultural norm which pervades most of mainstream thinking the same way the expectation of nuclear family or gender roles do). This definitely applies to most of the UK.

My grandmothers came from two different UK countries and would both be over 110 years old if they were alive today - they both trotted out the phrase "The devil makes work for idle hands" if they saw us children just "messing around" doing not much.

I think the difference is the emphasis, as others have said, on being entertained. It used to be that your hands/ body had to be busy with chores but as long as you "looked busy" and were getting a chore done your mind was free to wander or be vacant, or observing/ mindful according to your personality.

I've always incorporated a lot of doing nothing into my day. And back in the day, i did nothing a LOT. But it's getting harder to do it now, with smart phones.

What would have been 4 hours of staring out of the window on a long train journey, is now 4 hours of scrolling and listening to podcasts.

I do still manage to do nothing when I sit in the garden, staring into space, listening to the birds.

I think 'mindfulness' is a rebrand of doing nothing. And I think constantly keeping our brains engaged with short-form, nonsense content is making us ill.

And yet here I am on my phone (I have been out and about this morning and to the gym though).

For some of us , quiet times in our heads doesn’t exist. It’s noisy , busy and overcrowded in there so we actually enjoy the switching off and we used to do other things to help with it, it’s just more convenient now that all those things are in one little device.

I agree doing nothing is a lost art.

I dunno. I've faffed about on MNet for far too long this morning. It's the equivalent of doing nothing or at least procrastinating before doing something more useful. Puts phone down; goes to peg washing 😀.

Why don’t you read on your phone? I do, still a massive book worm. It’s so easy and convenient, and I can do it while waiting for things, on public transport, doing boring chores etc. without having to actually carry a bulky book or worry about it getting wet/dirty/damaged.

I never did nothing and I don’t know anyone who did?!

Not many humans can tolerate that, unless exhausted or ill - our brains need stuff to do.

I never just waited, I read or wrote (lists or work) or listened to music. Everyone I knew or saw did the same.

And those men of which you speak took newspapers with them..

Nothing at all or nothing productive? I suck at the first , but great at the second.

Goodness - were you actually there, in the ‘olden days’, @Platypusdiver ? Because I spent pretty much the first fifty years of my life without widespread Internet immersion for everything - and I don’t remember long periods of doing literally nothing.

Books and radio and listening to music filled most ‘inactive’ hours (though reading has always been an active thing for me) but there was always something to do, as pp have outlined. The world without Amazon, Net-a-Porter and Ocado required a helluva lot more coming and going!

We didn't do "nothing", we were far more productive and sociable.

It’s really simple things that are missing. Like waiting for a bus, going to the launderette and washing dishes. Those were the times I’d do “nothing”.

Goodness - were you actually there, in the ‘olden days’

Yes. Am 50. Got my first smartphone when I was 38. Maybe i haven't explained myself well, but I didn't mean long stretchs of time, but many short periods, which add up over the day. Certainly some read books. But from my memory not many. We did nothing in the car, when waiting, on the bus, at breaks. Nothing as a definite activity.

Saves us time - which we then waste by using the internet for hours to no useful end at all.

I’ve watched people spend an hour on the train scrolling through Instagram. Some of them don’t even stop scrolling as they go through the ticket barrier.

When I used to commute by public transport I would have long stretches looking out the window. Walking without headphones. And sometimes chatting to other commuters. I remember getting on the coach and saying hello to all the people I’d got to know.

Going to the shops with my mum involved a long walk and lots of small shops where she would chat with the shop keepers and then a big shop in the kwik save.

Agree with a pp that the time we have saved is now taken up with scrolling. It’s designed to be addictive.

Reading a book is a different activity and experience to scrolling.

No - you explained what you meant perfectly! I just don’t recognise it.

In the car: one would chat, or listen to the radio, or read, or play games.

When waiting … Again, chat, or read a newspaper, or make a shopping list. Some people would knit or crochet, etc.

On the bus / train: look out of the window, read (I particularly used to enjoy long train journeys with the latest Vogue or Harpers & Queen), study, write letters, plan meals or seed planting. And of course if you had children you had to entertain them yourself!

At breaks - dash out for lunch or shopping, chat to colleagues, use your work phone to sort out household, child, social life, read magazines, newspapers, holiday brochures. Weekly letter to your brother in Canada or your best friend travelling in Australia …

I remember when buying a new pair of shoes meant an entire afternoon traipsing around town … People in the generation above mine studied by correspondence course - actual correspondence; receiving assignments and sending off essays by post. In my memory my parents would drive to the turkey farm and pick out their chosen bird. When we picked it up on Christmas Eve we had to pluck it ourselves. People were rarely doing nothing - but yes, mindfulness was built into everyday life.

Smartphones enabled “doing two things at once”

So before you might have watched TV (or a programme you had recorded on a VHS tape!) but you probably would have focused on just that. On the bus - maybe music from a Walkman, but not music and scrolling.

Same here, I used to read every page of Ceefax every day, the back of cereal packets, books, magazines, newspapers, I have always been a compulsive reader. I do scroll mindlessly sometimes, but a lot of the time I am reading books, articles, news websites, you name it, or listening to podcasts or audio books. I also live chatting and will often chat to strangers on trains and in shops, anywhere I go. I'm not very good at doing nothing but it has not really changed with smartphones.

Maybe you were surrounded by unusually inert people, OP? I’m 52 and don’t recognise that at all. When I first started commuting from Oxford to London by bus several days a week, people read books or newspapers, or worked on laptops. When I first started using the tube regularly, I’d estimate the majority were either listening to music or reading a book. When I was a child we always had the radio on in the car.

I agree. People rarely look outside. I will have a book for longer journeys, but not for shorter ones.

I always take a smallish paperback with me and you can see people glancing to read the cover "ooo what is that someone is actually turning pages for"

At the end of some journeys I have read 50 odd pages of something that for me is enjoyable (obviously my book choices will not be the same as others) but there is a book or two out there for everyone.

I never feel "jealous" I didn't spend the hour or so on my phone, but presume that some think reading pages of a book is like so lame!

Not sure about that, but I think the overstimulation caused by phones, tech and always feeling 'on' has resulted in people needing to practice mindfulness or meditation.

Honestly, this isn't something I recognise at all.

I grew up before smartphones and while I was definitely out of the house more (as nothing could be done online) I certainly don't remember doing "nothing". I would always have a couple of books on me to read, and if I was going on a long journey, I'd pop into Smiths and buy a magazine or two, or a puzzle book.

At home I read (a lot), did jigsaws, played board games, watched TV, called my friends on the phone, baked...all normal things, really. I don't remember ever sitting around doing "nothing" unless I was standing in a queue, but even then I'd probably chat to whoever I was with.

Nowadays I do as much online as I can, and still do the same hobbies I did before - I just multi-task them more.