Daily Herald opinion: The power of a pause: In praise of rest, relaxation and doing absolutely nothing to start the new year off right

The new year is still very new, but are you carrying old habits into 2026 with you?

Do you have lists of goals, plans, promises and errands piling up?

Do you feel like you have to be doing and going and staying busy all day, every day?

If so, perhaps it’s time to pause for a small but necessary celebration of doing absolutely nothing.

Not the pretend nothing that still counts as something, like “resting” while scrolling on your phone, or “taking a break” while reorganizing your kitchen pantry.

We mean the real thing. The kind of nothing where you stare out a window long enough to wonder whether that cloud looks more like a rabbit or a shoe.

The kind of nothing where you sit down with a book, get so lost in its characters and plot, that you completely lose track of time.

Throughout the year, and especially around the holidays, life speeds up in a variety of ways.

We chase productivity like a skittish cat, always darting out of reach.

We fill the quiet spaces with noise, the open time with obligations, and the rare downtime with tasks disguised as leisure.

It’s no wonder many of us arrive at January feeling like we’ve run a marathon.

But doing nothing — true, blissful nothing — is not laziness. It’s maintenance. It’s resting your body and mind to bring you back to neutral after maintaining a heightened state throughout the year just to keep up with all those activities and to-do lists.

Nothing is where dreams are born, where ideas stretch their legs, where the mind finally looks around and says, “Oh, there you are.”

In the year ahead, we’ll be told to optimize, strategize, maximize, prioritize. But maybe to start the new year out right, we really need less of all those things.

Instead, sit on the couch without guilt, stare into space without apology, let the minutes slip by without giving them purpose.

So here’s a modest proposal for 2026. Schedule some unscheduled time. Set aside a few hours free from productivity. Let yourself wander, ponder and dawdle. Let your thoughts meander.

Because in a world obsessed with constant doing, choosing to do nothing is just one way to protect your peace and wellbeing.

And who knows. If we give ourselves the gift of stillness, we might just begin the new year with exactly what we’ve been missing: space to breathe, space to think, and space, finally, to feel rested and ready for whatever 2026 has in store for us.