On Having Nothing To Do

What would you do if you could spend your time doing whatever you wanted to? Kind of an open question considering nothing is technically stopping you from “doing whatever you wanted to” right now, as long as said whatever is physically possible. You are fully in your power to jump up and down or to stop reading this dumbass piece, but what about things outside of your physical constraints? These are made up for with resources - goods and services like a laptop, a movie ticket, or a donut. As of the time of writing, said resources are most commonly gathered with employment, our bargaining chip in society. We can rent out our labor for cash, then use that cash to rent out other people’s labor or trade it for their goods. It’s a pretty great system to be honest, and it allows for all sorts of fun things like us not all having to be farmers and the existence of Dave & Buster's. With that in mind, we can’t forget that our labor costs us the most valuable thing we have: time. So let me try to rephrase the question.

What if you didn’t have to work and still received a paycheck? That’s a question I’ve been faced with recently, and while it may sound like a good problem to have, it's slowly led me to having a moderately sized existential crisis. Last May, my job changed drastically and, without going into too much detail, my work got reduced to less than normal for the foreseeable future (thanks AI) with no change to my salary. At first this seemed like an incredible deal, a holiday to finally do the things I’ve always wanted to do. But soon the anxiety started to set in. I now have all this time; how do I make sure not to waste it? This isn’t by any means the first time this question rears its head into my life. It usually comes to visit on Sunday afternoons and quiet evenings in. However, given the amount of time I now had, the question was now the loudest it had been since COVID. Although at the time I was so busy spending time being anxious about COVID itself that there wasn’t much left for anything else. Anyway, the first thing I decided to dedicate myself to was the activities that would normally be hobbies: music, photography; and for the first time in my life, I felt like I actually had time to give them the effort they deserve.

This is when I realized how many before me were asked the same “what would you do if money wasn’t an issue” question. Chopin, Debussy and Mozart? Came from money. Manet, Raphael and Kandinsky? Rich. Virginia Woolf’s father was editor of the Dictionary of National Biography, Oscar Wilde’s mother was a celebrated poet and nationalist figure, and both Locke and Marx had rich lawyer dads. Nepo babies, every last one of them. They didn’t have to worry about money for a second and could spend their time developing works and ideas. As I fully dedicated myself to my passions for the first time, I realized what a privilege it truly is. I looked back at all the times I felt lazy for not pursuing them to their full extent while I still worked a full job and was both relieved and upset. Of course I wasn’t able to do as much as I wanted to; I was exhausted from work, and how could I possibly have compared myself to people who had all this time to dedicate to art or writing? Obviously not all employees are secret geniuses that would become the next Voltaire given the chance (I’m certainly not), and not all nepo babies end up being greats, but it does put things into perspective. I’m not saying I didn’t have time outside of work - the truly driven ones out there are able to become artistically enlightened despite a job - but seeing how much easier it is without one was a real curtain pull moment.

So I went and started pouring my energy into making stuff. But here’s the thing: when these activities are hobbies, you do them a little, enough to tickle your brain, then you have to go and tend to real life. However, when they become your main source of satisfaction and could be substituted for anything else at a moment’s notice, you really question why you chose to do any one thing over another. Why do I even care about learning the piano? Or photography? Or another language? Ok, I’ll be able to play some song…and then? Maybe I should be spending my time building an app, or maybe a robot. But why? To be rich? Would it make me happy? Is that even the point? What’s the point of anything? — When you reach this level, it might be best to just declare mental bankruptcy and move on with your day. This question of meaning might very well be what we’re all trying to escape with regular employment. Obviously we need to earn a paycheck, but what we’re really getting is the ability to outsource the direction of our life and not have to think too hard about the deeper questions. We can wave these away, being too busy with a job that for most of us does enough to create a semblance of fulfilment but no real purpose. A job that we’re all so eager to escape through eventual retirement, only to be faced with the same question of meaning. Then we fill the rest of our time doing little things here and there which feel fulfilling at the time but don’t amount to any greater sense of purpose.

Maybe it’s just me, maybe I’m looking for something that doesn’t exist, or maybe I was unable to concentrate on something outside of work for long enough for it to amount to anything. I see these people that, despite everything, are able to start social groups or companies or become musicians or content creators. I don’t think it’s shameful to envy them - those who have a thousand other things to do and are still called to some greater purpose so strongly they can push through it all. I don’t think I’m alone in this. The amount of productivity content out there makes it clear the world is brimming with eagerness to create. Yet I see so many young people struggling to find creative fulfillment after their 9-hour shift at Big Tech Inc. or Consulting co. After all, society is designed to put you on rails, making it easy to create “value” for it and forget about the search for greater meaning. And maybe for most people that’s fine! It’s easy, you don’t have to think. Work, distract yourself, and soon enough move on to starting a family, which is the default avenue for purpose according to my elders. Then again, this is the same society that teaches its people that meaning comes from self-actualization, and moreover, commercialising that self-actualization. So then at what point does the self-actualization fairy come and tell me what my true purpose is? Pushing me to pursue some greater goal despite everything? The one where once I complete this one thing in life I’ll finally be happy? Guys, I think the self-actualization fairy doesn’t exist.

So how do we create this feeling of purpose? If you think you’re about to be told the meaning of life, you’re in for another self-actualization fairy moment. I have no idea, but I do think there are things that feel more meaningful than others. When we have “free time” in 2026, the first place we go is to anything that brings instant gratification. Swiping Hinge, doomscrolling TikTok, binging a show or any other activity with some ominous name. They’re fun for a minute, grab your attention, but the high only lasts so long so you keep chasing the dragon, and it rarely ends with you feeling great - chances are, the quicker the gratification, the worse the comedown. So the first hint is that fulfillment and purpose come from undertakings with longer time horizons.

This is where I previously got stuck every time. I’ve always been eerily aware of the ticking clock slowly counting down to oblivion, and that’s usually enough to kick me awake and try to find something worth pursuing. It usually started with an idea or something that inspired me - when I was out travelling in Asia, I found myself in a hostel group, and one night this guy bust out his guitar and serenaded us with it. He played country classics, Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, and damn, he was good. You’d think it’d be a cringey mess, but it turns out true talent can make you stare in awe and completely forget that he was just trying to hook up with the brunette in his dorm. All that to say, it was inspiring. I also wanted to play music like that, make people feel the way he made me feel, create that sense of unity. What’s the point of anything else when you can conjure that kind of magic with your bare hands? - So you buy a guitar, you take a few lessons, you start to learn how to play which fuels a passion and sparks accomplishment. It’s amazing, until you reach a plateau and forget what it was all for. The creativity called to you, you answered, and now you just find you’re lost. This is what I mean by getting stuck: when the road isn’t paved in front of you, you have to pave your own road.

So you start to second-guess if it’s even worth spending the time pursuing whatever it is you recently started. There have been periods of my life where this exact anxiety paralysed me to the point where I’d just spend my time planning what to do instead of doing anything. On the other hand, there were other periods where I’d try to do too much and burn out. I’d want to try music and dancing and sports and a new language, but the opportunity cost of doing anything on that list is everything else on that list, so I jumped around becoming a jack of all trades but master of none. In my perfect life I’d be a Renaissance man, becoming an expert in all of it: writing, the arts, the sciences; alas they don’t pay Renaissance men too well these days. Though if the point is to feel fulfilled, and to use this as fuel for a greater sense of purpose, maybe it doesn’t matter what you do as long as it’s creatively stimulating; maybe it's just how you do it.

I don’t have the answer to life or purpose or meaning, but this is the working theory I’m currently testing out. I know what ideas fuel me and what makes me feel inspired. I also know I can’t pursue all of it, and whatever I decide to embark on will take time away from all the things I don’t, but the time will pass anyway, so it’s better to be doing something instead of nothing. The right path, the one that your career can’t possibly offer you, feels fulfilling to you in the moment and ends with a clear goal at the end of the line. It’s finding the balance between these two that might be the hardest step in all of this. The goal is key; creativity is not self-sustaining, and without targets along the way it’s easy to get lost. As a software engineer, I’ve often been asked “which programming language should I learn?”, and the answer was always a followup question: “what do you want to build?”. I love the idea of learning all these new skills: a new language, a new instrument, how to properly cut garlic; but the skill for the skill’s sake will only get you as far as your initial excitement will take you. Without a proper understanding of what you want and why you’re doing anything, you’ll end up facing the same existential crisis I was.

Then again, you also can’t over-rely on goals. We often see life as this thing you complete, like there is a scoreboard at the end once you’re done and you get to stare at it and smile. So many of our choices are based on that end. What stories are we going to tell our kids? Who’s going to be standing around my deathbed? How much money am I going to end up with? That isn’t to say these aren’t things we should care about, but it’s important not to live experiences as memories before they’re even done. Life is only made of present moments, and to fill those with chores for some future goal that might or might not come is just torture, and not something you’re likely to stick with anyway. At some point someone said “It’s about the journey, not the destination”, and they were definitely half right; it’s about both. Finding something that makes you feel fulfilled today and gives you purpose for tomorrow.

This isn’t news though, it wasn’t to me anyway. I did set goals (yes I know about SMART), and I did do things that called to me, but I was still feeling that void. That’s when I realised that none of these activities I was filling my time with were contributing to anything greater. That’s the key to this whole meaning question, at least I think, it’s being a part of something bigger than yourself - by bringing in other people. On reflection, it never feels enough to just do something; I need to share it. Learning for learning’s sake, or creating for creation’s sake, feels inherently fulfilling but ultimately pointless. And of course it does; we’re social animals, we exist in communities, and everything we do is a reflection of that and needs to go back into these communities to complete the cycle. It’s through people that we can escape the mundanity of the short time we’re here for and live beyond ourselves.

I wrote about meaning, purpose and fulfillment, but what, if not friends, family and community, bring these feelings forth the most? So of course people need to be taken into account when thinking about adding meaning to your personal work. Our previous blueprint for purpose: jobs, at least good jobs, are able to achieve a weird simulacrum of that same thing: working with and for people to accomplish a goal. It’s that final interaction with people that makes the whole thing worth it. It’s only when you finally deliver that project that it finally feels complete. By profession, I’m an engineer, but it was never about the engineering; I wanted to build things with people and for people. And the same goes for personal goals: I’ve been pursuing photography for a long time, but there’s a big difference in how it feels to finish editing a photo and posting that photo for the world (my 3 friends) to see.

So that’s how I’m answering the question. What would I do if I could do anything? Work on things I’m excited about with clear goals centered around people. Make more posts, practice music to then perform it live, make a fool of yourself but be part of something. The great Austin Butler once said “embarassement is an underexplored emotion, everything you want is on the other side of that”. So that’s what I’m trying for now, at least until I get distracted by something. It might already be obvious to many, but it took me a second to figure it out. To be honest, I’m not even sure why I’m writing this. I guess I just needed to get my thoughts out, and by the time they crystallized, I had something I wanted to share.

The guitarist from the hostel never did hook up with the brunette; in fact, she slapped him when he asked her point blank. And yet he gave us the gift of that moment, and I’m sure to him that made it all worth it.