There are days when I lie flat on my back, eyes open, staring at the ceiling fan rotate in slow circles like it is mocking me. No music. No social media. No productivity app humming in the background. Just me. Breathing, thinking and being. And even in that stillness, something creeps in — guilt. The guilt of doing nothing.

In a world that rewards burnout and praises busy, nothingness feels like failure. We have been wired to believe that if you are not moving, you are not growing. If you are not working, you are wasting time. If you are not chasing something, then what are you even doing with your life?

But here is the quiet truth no one wants to say out loud: doing nothing is also doing something.

Photo Credit: Pinterest

You Are Only As Valuable As You Are Productive

Somewhere along the line, rest became a luxury and not a right. Hustle became a badge of honour. “Booked and busy” became a personality trait. And the worst part? We all bought into it.

From motivational podcasts that guilt you into waking up at 4 a.m. to Instagram reels that romanticize 16-hour workdays, the message is loud and clear: you must earn your existence.

Even our leisure has to look productive. We turn hobbies into side hustles. We monetize every moment of peace. We tweet about our therapy sessions, journal for content, and sip tea in candlelit baths just to prove we are “resting right.”

When rest starts looking like another aesthetic performance, you have to ask — is it still rest, or just a different kind of hustle?

African Parents Don’t Believe in Rest

Let’s talk about the societal side of it. Many of us grew up in homes where rest was treated like a sin. If you were caught sleeping past 7 a.m. on a Saturday, someone was going to say, “Is that how you will behave in your husband’s house?” If you dared to lie down in the afternoon, they would ask, “Are you the only one tired in this house?”

Our parents didn’t rest. They didn’t know how to. For them, survival came with constant motion. There was no space to breathe, no time to pause. And so, even when the world changed and pace shifted, the guilt stayed with us.

We inherited their urgency, exhaustion and anxiety around idleness.

But we are burning out in ways they didn’t. Emotionally. Mentally. Spiritually. Because this version of the world demands more from us — more creativity, more performance, more reinvention — while offering very little in return.

Stillness is Rebellion

There is a soft but powerful movement that has been quietly growing, especially among Black women and African youth. It is the radical idea that rest is resistance.

Tricia Hersey of The Nap Ministry said it best:

“Rest is a form of resistance because it disrupts and pushes back against capitalism and white supremacy.”

When you choose rest (real rest), you are choosing not to be used, not to be extracted, not to be reduced to output and deliverables. You are choosing yourself.

And in a country like Nigeria, where the youth are expected to rise above bad governance, terrible infrastructure, and emotional fatigue while still performing excellence, rest becomes a silent protest. A refusal to carry a broken country on our backs while smiling for Instagram.

Photo Credit: Pinteres

The Magic of Doing Nothing

Here is what they don’t tell you: doing nothing can be a portal.

It is in the stillness that clarity comes. It is when you unplug, disappear, and let the world move without you that ideas start to form, emotions surface, and healing begins.

There is a kind of magic in letting yourself be without trying to fix, perform, or improve anything. Just be.

Imagine taking a whole weekend off: no plans, no calls, no texts, just you and your mind against the white walls of your house.

The first day will definitely feel like detoxing from a drug, and your brain will start to scramble for dopamine. But by the second day, your body will exhale. For the first time in months, you will be home within yourself.

And you know what will happen after that weekend? Heightened productivity. Because rest is a necessity at some point, not a luxury.

Rewriting the Definition of “Doing”

Maybe the problem is that we have been taught to define “doing” in terms of output. But what if “doing” also means: holding your friend while they cry, listening to your body when it says “rest,” taking a walk with no destination, crying over a song because it touched something in you, watching the clouds shift, and thinking about nothing at all.

These moments might not fit neatly into the highly productive to-do lists and schedules you curated, but they would not win you any LinkedIn applause. And, you know what? They are still sacred, still meaningful, still enough.

Let This Be Your Permission Slip

If you are reading this and feeling guilty about how long it has taken you to “get your life together,” breathe. If your days are full of things that don’t make you money but do make you feel alive — keep doing them. If you have been forcing productivity when your soul is begging for rest, please stop.

This is your permission slip. Your permission slip to pause, to sleep, to dream, to walk slowly, to laugh for no reason, and to say no.

To do absolutely nothing and feel no shame about it.

Because you are not a machine. You were never meant to be.

In the End, We Are Still Human

We forget that we are living, breathing organisms, not apps, not algorithms, not timelines to be optimized. We need stillness, silence, sacred pause.

So the next time you are doing “nothing,” and guilt tries to knock, remember this:

Doing nothing is not a waste; it is a return, a reset, a reclamation.

Sometimes, the most revolutionary thing you can do in this loud, restless world is to close your eyes and rest.