Make the art of ‘Doing Nothing’ your goal for 2024

It’s been documented that the stretch between Christmas and New Year’s Day—otherwise known as Twixmas—is notoriously the laziest time in the calendar year.

Fortunately, my wife Liz and I[1] have adequately prepared to remain in comfortable clothing while lounging on the couch for days, watching endless stretches of “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit” and gorging ourselves with a diet that would make our primary care physicians blush at its immodesty—as well as the cholesterol intake.

But we train for this six-day stretch year-round by honoring a tradition that we’ve invented called Do-Nothing Mondays.

I described Do-Nothing Mondays in this column in 2021. The rules are simple: You come home from work, change into comfortable clothes—usually flannel pajama bottoms and hoodie sweatshirts—order a pizza, turn on “SVU” and do nothing until you fall asleep on the couch[2].

And, honesty, we’ve honed Do-Nothing Mondays into a form of artistic expression.

So you might imagine that we were slightly flummoxed by a few factors going into this year’s vacation week.

First, Do-Nothing Monday coincided with Christmas Day. Yes, it’s a minor inconvenience that we only need to confront every seven years or so, but it still meant that we’d have to leave the house due to family commitments.

Then there is the troublesome fact that so many other people are doing nothing this week, so how are we to distinguish Do-Nothing Monday from every other day?

So we decided to celebrate Do-Nothing Monday on Tuesday,[3] and distinguish ourselves by not moving from the couch for 12 solid hours and watching 16 consecutive episodes of “SVU.[4]”

And it was amazing.

You see, Do-Nothing Mondays were designed to protest the puritanical work ethics ingrained in Americans, which much of free world doesn’t adhere to. In the United States, we are taught to equate hours of weekly work with virtue, meaning the more hours one works, the more virtuous they are perceived to be.

This idea is antithetical to a phrase originally attributed to the late Massachusetts senator Paul Tsongas[5]: “No one on his deathbed ever said, ‘I wish I had spent more time on my business.’”

Liz and I obviously embrace the latter.

People don’t spend enough time doing the things that they truly enjoy, which never feels like “work.”

I’m not advocating that people sit on their asses and vegetate until the Grim Reaper makes his way to their doorstep. Not at all. I’m advocating that in 2024 everyone make a resolution to work less and do more of the things you enjoy, even if that includes “doing nothing.”

Anyway, I have the rest of the week off and plenty of “SVU” to watch, as well as an anniversary to celebrate. So I’m signing off for 2023. Happy New Year, Ink Link readers.

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[1] Not surprisingly, our anniversary falls on Dec. 28.

[2] For those interested in going next level, I suggest throwing some marijuana edibles—indica preferred—into the mix.

[3] I know, this is flirting with either the paradox or an Abbott and Costello routine. Or maybe both. It’s best not to think too hard about it.

[4] We watched it on Hulu, meaning the episodes were roughly 45 minutes each, sans commercials.

[5] This was from a book Tsongas wrote, where he was mentioning something his friend Arnold Zack had told him.