How Deciding To Do Nothing For A Year Transformed My Life
At the age of 27, I gave myself permission to not do anything for a whole year — this is what happened
Alright, right off the bat: I didn’t really not do anything at all for an entire year. But you knew that before you clicked, so stick with me and let me get into the details.
It Started With An Existential Crisis
I graduated from university in the summer of 2016 and right away, I knew I wouldn’t go back for a post-graduate degree. I was at a point where I felt that if I had to write another essay on another topic I just really didn’t care about at all, I might just literally implode.
Yes, the best thing to do when facing an existential crisis is to travel 7977 kilometres to a country you’ve never been where people communicate in a language you can’t even begin to understand.
Needless to say, I decided against dying a gruesome death of being blown up by frustration from the inside. Instead, I went to China — yes, the best thing to do when facing an existential crisis is to travel 7977 kilometres to a country you’ve never been to where people communicate in a language you can’t even begin to understand — and started an internship as a social media manager. They didn’t understand Facebook and Instagram and Twitter and I did, so apparently I proved useful.
I didn’t make many friends in Beijing even though it was one of the most welcoming places I have ever been to. I struggle to make friends in any city in the world. So, that one’s on me. But all I had most days was the breathtaking city view from my apartment on the 22nd floor and my newly acquired Audible subscription.
I would listen to books all the time. When I was going to work or cooking or walking around or shopping or coming back from work, I always had a book in my ear. And soon enough, the likes of Brian Tracy and Gary Vaynerchuck and even Marie Kondo — the spark of joy herself — urged me to do bigger things with my life. To tidy, to work hard, to figure out how to find my very own spot in this world — regardless of what university, society and my overly intrusive family prepared me for or expected me to do.
It Continued With Not One, But Two Failed Businesses
It was in the autumn of 2016 that I made the decision that I would create my own business. Frankly, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I didn’t really know what I was good at or what came easy to me that didn’t come easy to others. (That’s what all the business gurus tell you to look out for.)
I knew I loved music more than most things and I had some experience in managing other people’s social media and once I finished my internship, I flew back home — to the beautifully overrated country of Switzerland — and took a minimum wage job to earn enough money to be able to afford a business coach who would hopefully show me the way to making money by helping musicians manage their social media. Yes, that was my first business idea.
It failed. But more about that later.
It was mid-2017 when I found a business coach I liked but of course, I couldn’t really afford their rates at the time and I just waited for an opportunity to work with them without going completely bankrupt with one transaction.
I was in luck because, in October of that year, that business coach decided to offer group coaching and I was one of the first people to sign up. I threw my money at them and over the next 12 weeks, I learned all the ins and outs of making money online by providing services that some people — preferably a very niche group of people — looked for and desperately needed.
I held onto my social media management for artists and musicians idea for way too long. Don’t get me wrong, I did make some money with it. But as it turned out, staying atop of social media platforms with all the changes, algorithms and new features was not my dream job.
Whaaat? Who would’ve thought?
It was not “my passion”. It was certainly not “my zone of genius”. It was hard work and it was hard work of the worst kind. The kind where you can’t see the end anymore. The kind in which you can’t see a purpose at all.
By the second half of 2018, I knew I didn’t want to do this for another 5 years or so. Heck, I didn’t want to do it for another five minutes. So, I quit.
I took a retail job to pay the bills and rent and embarked on another journey of figuring out my big business idea. It didn’t take long and I realised that I had some amazing skills and knowledge around self-development.
I disappoint at least seven people before breakfast by just being me.
Things such as not caring about other people’s opinions, being myself at all times, saying no when I really want to say no, having overcome many years of suffering from comparisonitis and people-pleasing — I was exceptionally good at all those things.
In fact, they have become so ingrained in me that I disappoint at least seven people before breakfast by just being me.
I was not always like that. Those are skills I had learned. Those are skill I had taught myself over the short period of approximately four years. If I could learn them and teach myself, surely I should be able to help others get to that point as well.
A new business idea was born: help people overcome their egos and live the life they truly want to live.
While I had to work on the social media management idea for a whole year before I made any income, the money started to come fast this time. Not enough for me to quit my job right away but enough to spark hope and make me feel like I had finally chosen the right path for me and my future of self-employment.
Did I mention that I had a hard time making friends earlier?
Yes, I generally have a hard time dealing with people one-on-one.
I don’t hate people. Not at all. It’s just that talking and socialising sucks the energy out of me like nothing else. Even with people I love. Even with my best friends who are — if I may say so — the funniest people on Earth.
I am an introvert. A very introverted introvert. In fact, on my MBTI test, I turned out to be over 90% introverted.
You might have guessed where this is going; building a business around helping people overcome their egos, fears, guilt and whatnot in one-on-one phone calls proved to be the fastest way to burn me out.
Only 6 months into starting this new endeavour and roughly two months of almost daily calls, interviews and podcast appearances, I was a shell of myself. I was less than a shell. I was a mess.
I decided to take a break. A break that never ended.
I fought hard but when the people around me started to whisper words such as depression and therapy, I knew I had hit a wall.
I decided to take a break. A break that never ended. I only had the courage to delete my website and respond to inquiries a couple of months later.
It Ended With A Burnout And A Big Lesson
In the summer of 2019, I had my burnout breakdown as I painfully realised that I had failed yet again.
In the middle of my darkest hour, I was desperately scrambling for my next business idea when my roommate asked the one question that would change everything: “Why are you in such a hurry?”
And then it hit me.
I was crashing, burning out but all my mind wanted is to figure out the next thing to do. Where was I running? Why did it have to happen now?
When you don’t have the slightest idea where you want to go or what you want to do, standing still to figure out a thing or two doesn’t sound like such a bad idea.
So, I did the bravest thing I could possibly do at the time: I gave myself permission not to have to do or succeed at anything for an entire year.
I worked a very unglamorous retail job to pay the bills and be able to comfortably find out what I really wanted to do. Trust me when I tell you that this was not an easy decision to make for myself. I knew I wanted more than that and the time to act was now.
It’s always now.
But when you don’t have the slightest idea where you want to go or what you want to do, standing still to figure out a thing or two doesn’t sound like such a bad idea.
The answer for me was immediate. As soon as I took all the must-dos and have-tos off the table, I started writing.
I always knew I liked to write. I also always knew it came naturally to me and that I was good at it. In the summer of 2019, about a month after I made that brave decision, I could come home super tired from my job at 9 PM and sit down in front of my computer and just write until 5 AM.
Within a year, I wrote well over 200K worth of words of fictional and non-fictional text with no intention of publishing or using any of it. I just wrote because I wanted to. Also, because I had to see how quickly I would grow tired of it.
But I have a feeling that I won’t grow tired of it. Writing feels different than anything I tried to do before. It just feels right. It feels like the thing I can and want to do for a very long time. And it’s funny how I knew this at a very early age in my life but I allowed parents, teachers, life to scare the obvious out of me.
Not anymore.
I am a writer.
This is my thing. My dream.
And this is my start on a path that would allow me to do nothing but. As of now, I am in the business of following my writing dreams and I got there by allowing myself not to be in any kind of business for an entire year.
What Can You Learn From This?
So, if you are the kind of person who struggles to figure out what they want out of life — or what they want out of life right now — you might want to try and allow yourself a break from absolutely having to find it.
Let yourself breathe. Let yourself try out as many things as possible and don’t put those things under the pressure of having to be a success.
“Failure is not the opposite of success; it’s part of it.”
— Arianna Huffington
