Who are you when nothing is demanded of you?

An existential dive into a day of "productivity withdrawal" AKA what happened when I stopped trying to be useful.

Between yesterdays and all the things I have yet to discover, between nothing and every possibility…

…that is where I live now.

Where the first morning rays spill through my windows and the old ways no longer seem relevant. Where I wake, again, to try to find a new lifestyle and try to find it in the one place I once refused to look:

The blankness of an empty calendar.

In a previous life, all those now-intentionally blank columns on my Google calendar would’ve filled me with the kind of fear that I imagine surfaces when you’re lost at sea — alone, disorientated, with no shore in sight. Luckily for old me, that fear never overstayed its welcome.

Every day I’d wake up to a calendar stacked with meetings, inboxes screeching with urgent-sounding messages, and an insatiable to-do list of tasks and reminders. Even the rest I would eventually “earn” was an orchestrated silence before the beat drop.

That filled calendar was always, for my sake, a lighthouse. The marked and impromptu events, to-dos across my days, weeks, and months — all of it a hybrid signal for both order and chaos. Structure and aimlessness. Momentum and stagnation.

Now, as I open up my calendar out of habit, the blankness leaves me no place to hide, no motion under which to bury that fear. Now, there’s just space. Too much, in fact.

If I leaned in, I’d fall right into its vastness and soundlessness, and once more — maybe for good this time — find myself adrift.

But this time, because I chose it.

I thought I already knew what this essay would be when I sat down to write it: A reflection on my opting out of productivity culture; a soft letting go of the output, of the doing, of the constant drum beat of more. That was before I’d metabolized just how much my day-to-day groundedness depended on that forward motion, something I wouldn’t firmly realize until I made it all dissolve.

A few false starts later and I saw that this isn’t just about “quitting” or untangling my worth from the cold, optimized part of myself.

This is a withdrawal. This is a confrontation.

With myself. With my past choices.

With time.

The best way to explain what I mean is to simply walk you through it:

A day in the life of…

…a once-ambitious, high-achieving perfectionist who staked her entire worth on how much doing she could do, and what happened when she just —

Stopped.

Let us begin here.

8:00 a.m.

I do not personally know many people who’ve actually attributed their entire success to a rigid morning routine. The kind promoted by hustle evangelists who insist that you, too, can be maximally productive and win the day as they do — if you just follow their oddly specific set of rituals. Something like:

Wake at 6 (if you’re a real one, 5)
      Journal
          Meditate
                  Read
                     Exercise
                            PlunGe into ice water
                         Build an orphaNage
                Eat bReaKfaSt or don’t (the internet can never agree on this one)

…all in the span of two hours — with or without butter in your coffee (remember that guy?).

I never followed a morning ritual myself. Not even back then.

Most mornings I was awake by 6. Sometimes 4 or 5, though it wasn’t some supreme ambition rustling me awake. It was fear.

One that lived just below the level of consciousness, telling me that I wasn’t doing enough. That no matter how much I’d already accomplished the day before or how obsessively I optimized, I was always one step behind. So I’d lie there, wide awake before dawn, wrecked by an insomnia that only worsened over the years.

Somehow my drive to stay productive — the very belief system that promised me a better life if I just optimized, just sanded myself down enough to be rewarded by the system — betrayed me.

Was there anything more tragic than all that effort — the morning rituals, the calendars and planners, the “systems” — to outrun the fear, yet never feel ahead?

Maybe that’s the paradox that traps us. It certainly did for me. For too long, in retrospect.

Nowadays I wake up when I wake up. Sometimes it’s 5am, often 8am, occasionally 9, even 10, but rarely past that, if ever.

Most people would see this unplanned wake time as a blessing, and they wouldn’t be wrong.

But it doesn’t yet feel like an act of rebellion. Not really.

These irregular mornings are actually the aftershock of detaching from the pressure to always be doing. An unhooking that’s worked double time to defang that fear of falling behind, and in turn, loosen insomnia’s grip.

My body simply hasn’t caught up to the fact that we’ve stopped.

It’s still in flight mode.

8:27 a.m.

The closest thing to a ritual is my morning cup of coffee.

A latte that I make at home: One espresso shot extracted from 18 grams of ground beans. Pulled for 28 seconds. Then topped with 240 milliliters of steamed low-fat 2% milk.

From here, the day doesn’t begin so much as it unfolds, less with a snap and more with a breath, the kind I didn’t know I was holding for years.

I’m not sprinting anymore, but I still carry this underlying tension, like being in a room that grows colder the longer I sit in it.

As long as I have my latte, I feel grounded. Things are good. Things are like they’ve always been.

I sip and savor every bit of it.

Then —

…it’s gone.

I barely register the disappointment, but it’s there. Because now that the cup is empty, the tides start to shift. The calm recedes.

And so the drift begins.

I guess that’s the hidden value of a morning ritual, no matter how bombastic or banal.

It keeps your feet on the ground — if only for a little while.

9:01 a.m.

By now, I’ve finished a meeting with my team over Zoom —

Is what I would’ve said in another life.

Back then I would’ve also stared down my to-do list, which I often quickly scribbled on a 3x5 index card the night before, ready to take pride in marking each item off with a satisfying checkmark.

They say the best way to build momentum is by tackling the hardest task first. Or maybe it was to start small with frictionless wins for things to snowball?

I never figured out which was actually more optimized, more efficient. But I believed in both, because either way, completion felt like proof.

Of effort, direction, and yes, worth.

Now I sit on the couch, holding onto my empty coffee cup like it’s a life raft, and think about all the things I could do. Not must-dos. Or even to-dos.

Rather: would-be-nice-to-get-around-tos.

It could be anything!

On deck: creative projects, mainly. I have a video script to write and an essay still forming. The creating is life-giving, but ever since shedding the cadence of constant factory-like output, my creative process has longer gestation periods. That means, unfortunately, it’s not every day that I get to the part that I secretly still crave: the doing, which gives the drifting shape. Gives me something to aim toward; something to endure for.

Ironically (and fittingly), it also means the larger gaps of not doing actually serve the work.

Aside from projects, there are the less glorious maintenance tasks of adulthood: doing laundry, getting groceries, watering plants, maybe shaving my legs.

The kinds of things that keep you afloat, even if they don’t look like progress.

The day is young.

It could be anything!

9:35 a.m.

My mind flits from one thought to another, trying, failing, then trying again to settle on an activity:

I could watch The White Lotus or Frasier — but it’s too early to be watching TV. (Though now that I think about it… says who?)

I could play video games — but maybe not Lies of P (that’s too mentally demanding) or Norco (that’s too slow).

I could read — but nah, maybe later.

I could… I could…

I’m not sure of anything anymore. Even the smallest options slip through fingers that used to know how to decide.

Oh.

How about a walk? Yes, a walk sounds just perfect. If I can’t create motion in my calendar, at least I can create it in my body.

I don’t bring my phone. It’s good to leave the house.

The sky is nice. Hey, a fluffy dog, too.

They say walks are good — for clearing your head, for your health, for letting ideas germinate. Somehow the productivity complex has swallowed up even walks and spat them out as one more productive behavior to track.

Am I doing this right?

Am I walking efficiently?

I wander. Not too slow, not too fast, not too sure what I’m hoping to find.

When is a walk just a walk?

Where does being productive end — and living begin?

10:33 a.m.

It’s been about two and a half hours since I woke.

Just two. And a half hours.

I’ve got to admit by now: A part of me, that productive one, the one that can’t help but optimize anything into a system, wants to turn this lack of doing into a system of optimized not-doing. How? Oh, I promise you: If I let myself, I wouldn’t just figure it out. I’d probably break it down into a 7-part framework for the most successful unproductive year of your life.

It’s like my brain will stop at nothing to simply avoid being with nothing.

For years, I shaped identity through output. Now that I’m reshaping that identity, it feels like losing a drug — and the version of myself it allowed me to be.

I’ve been so defined by how I spend time that I don’t trust myself inside it. You’d think that when you finally get the chance to slow down, your body would still. But no, I get restless.

Time feels different in the stillness of nothing. It doesn’t tick like a clock or flow like a river. It watches quietly, then asks: “What have you done with me?”

Trick question.

No matter how precise the systems for excellence and freedom, time remains untamed. It’s neither chaotic nor kind.

It’s just indifferent.

Whether you’re sprinting or stalling, rising or ebbing, it doesn’t wait. It doesn’t care.

And that… that coldness —

Maybe that’s what I’m still learning to live with.

11:37 a.m.

Lunch time. Finally, something to do.

I lay out two slices of sourdough bread to begin making a sandwich.

For nearly all of my life, I equated time with money, believing that time could be spent like money: save it, invest it, even waste it. Everything had a going rate:

$200/hour if you’re consulting.

$100/hour if you’re editing.

$0/hour if you’re thinking or eating.

I stack turkey on one slice of bread, cheese on the other.

I think about all the times I’d rushed out to the kitchen between meetings to cobble together something that passed as sustenance, then scuttled back to the office within 10 minutes. Lunch was just productivity culture’s code for You can still work while you chew, right?

Is it any wonder why we’re always in a hurry, even during the times we’re “supposed” to have for ourselves?

Time isn’t yours.

Time is money.

Time is a debt collector.

I add avocado and a squirt of mayo. Then one more violently wheezy squirt — a lot more mayo than I normally do because I deserve it, goddammit.

Sandwich…

complete.

Thank goodness, too. I’ve just bought myself some time from time.

11:52 a.m.

Ugh, I finish the sandwich too fast — against all advice to chew slowly and “take your time.”

Crud.

Now I guess…dishes?

In that moment between one completion and the next, there’s this flicker of:

Who am I when nothing is demanded of me?

1:07 p.m.

I watch Frasier (the original series) while scrolling through news headlines — and boy, my brain melts down before long.

So I wipe the counter, even get into the tiniest of crevices I’d missed before.

I vacuum. A curious onlooker might wonder if I’m training for the Olympics, specifically in the category of “domestically repressed rage.”

Then I turn my attention to the bookcase in our living room and decide: Yes, the books do, in fact, need to be re-arranged alphabetically. Maybe by color, too.

Good. This is good.

If I keep moving, I’m still useful. I’m proving I still matter.

For what?

For whom?

Maybe no one in particular. Maybe myself. Or maybe…

…time?

2:26 p.m.

I’ve officially finished every reasonable chore in the home by now. Any more and I’ll have to go over to the neighbor’s and hijack their chores.

I can’t help it. The ghost of doing still haunts me.

It shows up as a voice that chants: “Hurry, hurry…huRRy” — and I obey, moving efficiently, reflexively, like I’m running out of time, like there’s an appointment I can’t be late to. I fall back into the rhythm without thinking.

Then I catch myself.

There’s nothing to rush for. Your calendar is empty, silly.

And yet, I move like I’m being chased.

When time is no longer stolen from you, something strange happens: You start to see what you’ve done with it.

And maybe even —

what it’s done to you.

2:32 p.m.

Leftover doing energy pulses under my skin. It won’t let go. It wants to home in on its next targets. (Turns out, the advice to start with easy, frictionless tasks to grease the wheels was better…)

Momentum needs motion, so I give it more.

I open Procreate on the iPad, not sure of what I’m going to draw. Only that I need to keep moving my hands.

Just keep it loose, you’re not trying to paint the next Starry Night.

They say having many hobbies is ideal and healthy. This counts, I think.

2:40 p.m.

Actually —

I really should be reading. I’ve been meaning to finish The Poppy War trilogy anyway.

They say I should be reading all the time to keep my thinking sharp and expansive.

You know what else they say?

That there’s an optimal way to do something. Always.

Like reading 52 books a year. One per week.

Like walking 10,000 steps a day. What is that, 5 miles?

Those are the numbers to aim for, if you want to do it right.

Maybe I should go for another walk then. Maybe this time with an audiobook — knock out both in one go.

Or maybe…

3:10 p.m.

Instead of painting… instead of reading…

Instead of going on a walk…

I find myself sprawled out on the couch, overwhelmed by all the things I feel like I should be doing but committing to none.

Sigh. I’m wasting so much time with coulds and shoulds.

We all dream of “getting our time back.” But once I had it, I wasn’t sure what to do with it.

Should I work on something?

Should I rest?

Should I…Could I live a little?

Every option felt like a test. Every misstep — a bad movie, a dud of a book, a conversation gone sideways — would squander the rarest, most precious resource of all: my “free” time.

And by “free”, they mean that time was yours to do with, as long as you felt like you were doing something of value. Something justifiable. Something that, if someone asked about it, you could point to and say, “Time well spent.”

Time, after all, is a debt collector. And if you don’t pay it back in usefulness, what are you even doing?

Maybe that’s why some people claim work is their hobby:

They genuinely wouldn’t know what else to do — guilt-free.

4:21 p.m.

I lie back on the couch — oh, hey, I’m a winner on a losing streak!

Riddle me this: Why is nothing harder than everything?

I catch the afternoon light dancing with shadows on the walls.

Lucky shadows, 

            still at it.

Is the absence of doing always this loud?

Goddamn.

That’s when the couch

 forgets

       it’s a couch.

Look at ‘em…so carefree.

6:36 p.m.

Daylight is quickly waning.

All the drifting, the productivity ghosts, the drag of outdated identities lead here.

This is the part where the weight of undirected time starts to settle into a slow-motion dread that doesn’t dissipate.

For those of us — actually, that’s all of us — whose psyche has been colonized by productivity culture, where the embedded belief is that if you’re not already in the midst of doing, you’re either too early, too late, or caught between things that never resolve, the sun setting is the unceremonious closing gong that mocks:

“What haven’t you accomplished today?”

My tally for today is… too much. I’ve done a whole lot of nothing.

But isn’t that the point of an empty calendar?

It should be freedom. It even feels like freedom — at first. The kind that only time unmoored from productivity, life unhooked from milestones, and days no longer punctuated by events can grant.

What if freedom isn’t relief?

The burden doesn’t disappear when you have wide-open days. It migrates, because even if no one else is dictating your hours, you still have to spend time well.

You still have to uSe iT wiSeLy, even without the usual guardrails of to-do lists and calendar events.

An empty calendar isn’t freedom. Not exactly. It becomes a shift from the optimization of urgency to the optimization of openness. A pressure dressed up as endless possibilities.

And when that pressure mounts, the old ways start to make sense again. At least, then, my life, my purpose, slotted in very nicely between my to-do list and sleep.

Doing things proved something.

Proved my aliveness.

7:20 p.m.

Time doesn’t feel as scarce as it once did, but it still doesn’t feel…safe.

Every so often, somewhere in the negative space the calendar left behind, I feel something else that doesn’t yet resemble peace, or even joy.

Rather, a kind of lightness, like the quiet weight of nothing tugging at me. And for a moment, it’s bearable, even beautiful.

“Productivity withdrawal” is real.

But it’s not really from productivity itself, but from the identity that wrapped itself around the output and the schedules full of doing. From the unspooling of a life unhooked from deadlines and achievement milestones.

Where the stillness of time doesn’t mean ease.

It means I’m alone with the passing.

8:03 p.m.

What does time become when there’s nothing to chase? When there’s no event to move toward?

When it’s just you and the day — and the silence between them?

Is it really okay to stop?

I’m not lost, but I’m listening for what I sound like in silence.

Time is a drumbeat — ba dum, ba dum, ba dum.

Or is that my own heartbeat, now that I’m finally still enough to hear it?

Now that I’m finally still enough to face the part of me that can no longer hide behind momentum.

Ma’am?

There’s nowhere left to run.

Here lies what remains.

9:15 p.m.

Spend enough time with time, under productivity culture, and you inevitably think of it as an enemy to thwart or outsmart.

But when you stop performing, stop demanding anything of time, it starts to play a different role in your life.

It stops being some force you battle or bend.

It hovers instead, like a ghost.

Like an unending and intimate presence to exist alongside — without you needing to earn the moment.

Only later do you realize that time also isn’t money. It’s not something to save, or waste, or be indebted to. But something you just let go.

Maybe that’s why we kept moving so fast —

So we wouldn’t stop and see what we were hiding from.

They say if you want to write, you should be cranking out 1,000 words a day.

But I’m not writing to keep up.

I’m writing to remember who I am, with time as my only witness.

9:49 p.m.

I still feel unsettled by time.

Time flatters the future because it helps you forget what you’ve already abandoned; and distracts you from where you are now.

But maybe that’s what it means to finally be with time, not always running ahead of it.

If I do this right, and I hope I am, the end of the to-do list is where my life might begin.

This is the moment. The moment no one describes.

The moment something in you might still change:

In the breathless beauty of not-yet.

11:43 p.m.

I have nothing to show for the day.

Except that I lived it — hour by hour, breath by breath.

They say you should get at least 8 hours of sleep if you want optimal health, sharp focus, and longevity.

But I’m not sleeping to optimize.

I’m sleeping to “try out” — finally after a long, long time — what real sleep feels like when it’s not fear-driven or performance-based.

Just sleep in its purest form.

Not as something earned after a full day’s worth of doing.

But as a basic right.