What Do You Do When There's Nothing To Do?
How to live with the unexpected emptiness of a simple life
Every day around 10 am, I finish my to-do list for the day. My coffee is half gone, but I’ve already meditated, journaled, worked out, and recorded a video for TikTok.
Depending on when my body chooses to wake up, I may also have time to shower and start my writing for the day. On an average day, I’m completely done with everything I want to do by 1 pm.
Being productive has its perils.
Lately, I’ve really been struggling to fill the hours between 1 pm and bedtime.
I know, I know, woe is me.
But it’s actually becoming a bit of a problem. Every day around 1 pm, I go down the list. Should I pick up a new hobby? Reinvest in an old one? Run errands? Do chores? Go on a hike? Sit by the beach?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining. Not by any means.
It’s just that I expected productivity to be more satisfying, or at least, take up more of my day. I didn’t expect it to feel so… empty.
No one really talks about what actually happens when you do all the things on your to do list.
No one says what it feels like to live a simple life after living a chaotic one.
No one prepares you for the emptiness that’s left behind.
But today, that’s going to change.
I’m going to tell you exactly what happened when I did all the things, edited my life down the essentials, and learned to live in the void that remained.
The Distraction of Complexity
You probably don’t realize just how much of your life is taken up by complexity and chaos.
It’s our natural state really. A byproduct of the human condition.
Like, I bet you can think of a room in your house right now that is a bit chaotic. It might be your basement, garage, kid’s room, or even a single junk drawer in your kitchen. The clutter in this room breeds complexity. Every time you see it, your mind fills with unfinished projects, decisions to make, messes to sort. You clutter up your body, mind, and energy just by being in the same room as it.
And this applies to so much more than junk drawers.
It applies to your schedule, always full of errands, chores, meetings.
To your body, overwhelmed by the foods, experiences, and energies you ask it to process.
To your relationships, weighed down with things left unsaid and commitments left unhonored.
Complexity robs you of time, possibilities, purpose, potential. It takes up way more space than it needs to and makes it hard to focus on what actually matters.
And we’re used to it. Most of us are comfortable with complexity. We are used to being busy and overwhelmed. Used to playing catch up on our to-do list.
We are so used to it that we don’t always realize how much of our identity is wrapped up in managing the chaos.
Complexity keeps us occupied. It gives us something to solve, something to react to, something to do.
But when the noise quiets… when things are finally simple and clean and still… what’s left?
What happens when—
every room in your house was clean, dusted, decluttered?
everything is exactly where you left it, waiting for when it’s needed?
you have several days off in a row (and it’s not your vacation)?
you allow your body a whole day just to process what its consumed?
What happens then?
Do You Really Want Simplicity?
We say we want a simpler life.
Less stress, less stuff, less rushing.
More ease, more peace, more room to breathe.
But then we turn around and complicate everything. We stack our calendars with to-dos. We start new projects before we’ve finished the old ones. We avoid the closet we said we’d clean last weekend. We hold onto things—ideas, obligations, clutter—that we no longer need.
We tell ourselves:
“If I had more time, a better house, a more inspiring job, a healthier body, then I could relax. Then I’d feel free.”
But real simplicity isn’t something you find after you fix everything.
It’s what happens when you stop trying to fix everything.
It’s doing what you say you’ll do. It’s trusting your first instinct. It’s cleaning the room in your house that’s been driving you crazy. It’s making one decision, and then letting that decision inform all the ones that come next.
There’s an energy to simplicity that defies explanation.
When thought becomes action—without all the in-between—it’s almost electric.
That’s the feeling we’re looking for when we say we want a simple life. That feeling of flow, of a thought becoming a thing, of an idea brought to life.
As someone who has found that flow in their own life, I’ve gotta say, it’s worth the effort. But it also comes with a few unexpected challenges.
Namely, when you start living that way, your life starts to feel... strangely empty.
There’s no crisis to solve. No pile of laundry in the corner. No internal drama about whether or not you should send the email.
There’s just you and the space that used to be taken up by chaos.
And it's beautiful, a little weird, and dramatically unsettling, all at the same time.
The Void After Chaos
We idolize simplicity because we think it will solve our problems. But what it actually does is strip away the distractions—leaving you face-to-face with all the shit you weren’t dealing with because there wasn’t enough time, space, freedom.
And once you find simplicity, you can’t help but ask:
“What do you do when there’s nothing to do?”
Complexity and chaos are like a shield that keeps us from having to confront a deeper problem— whether that’s emptiness, boredom, grief, desire, lack of purpose, or something else entirely. Once that shield is gone, you’re forced to deal with whatever was waiting in the void.
For me, complexity and chaos distracted me from the lack of fulfillment I felt in my life. Yes, I had a boyfriend, a job, a beautiful place to live, but there was always a feeling like “something is missing.”
And when I started to create space, the things that didn’t fit stuck out like a sore thumb.
Like how my boyfriend said he’d do something—and then didn’t.
Or the way I felt drained after work.
Or how my house didn’t feel like a home.
In the wake of complexity, these deeper problems became something I couldn’t ignore. Their energy took up too much space.
So, I started simplifying the big things too. I spoke my concerns to my boyfriend, I faced the idea that I needed a new job, I opened to moving out of my house so I could find a home.
I simplified my life over and over again until all that was left was empty space.
The Possibility of the Void
You’d think that after simplifying everything, something new would come in to fill the void.
Nature abhors a vacuum, right?
But for a while now, I’ve just been here in the emptiness. My time didn’t fill back up, my future husband didn’t suddenly appear, my dream apartment is still MIA.
They say you have to clear your life out to make space for what’s next.
But what happens when the next thing doesn’t come?
How do you find comfort in the space that’s left?
What do we do with all this space?
You’re probably not going to like this answer.
Because I don’t think you’re meant to fill it. At least, not in the way you did before.
The void isn’t a gap. It’s not missing anything. It’s an opening, a possibility, a pause.
A place where you can grow something entirely new—not because you’re trying to fill it, but because you are present with what is.
Doing nothing isn’t easy. It takes practice to stay with the stillness. It takes trust to let the space remain uncluttered long enough for something real to emerge.
Sometimes on the days when I finish everything by 10 am, I feel oddly panicked. Like somehow I didn’t do enough or like I need to get another job that takes up more of my time.
Except…
Except then I remember how much possibility exists in my life right now. How much freedom. How much time.
I could do literally anything I want. Any day of the week.
When I first started to prioritize simplicity, I felt overwhelmed by how much time I had to fill. Now, I’m a little more comfortable in the void. I allow my day to sprawl in any direction that feels good, to flow with whatever is alive inside of me that day.
I’m careful not to spend too much time on shallow time fillers, like scrolling or watching TV. To not let the space I’ve created go to waste. To be intentional with my time.
Of course, that doesn’t mean I can’t watch TV or scroll.. I just have to set boundaries around it, like everything else.
And the more I practice, the easier it becomes to sit in the stillness. To stop rushing to fill the space. To feel… oddly at home in the void.
5 Ways to Feel at Home in the Void
You can’t conquer the void.
Floating in nothingness isn’t something you master.
But you can learn to move through it. And eventually, the void can feel more like home than chaos ever did.
If you are in the process of simplifying your life, on a mission to stop being so busy, or simply looking to feel more comfortable in the silence and stillness, here are five things to keep in mind.
Start with the physical. The easiest place to begin is always on the physical plane. Clean your junk drawer and dust the shelves. Start moving your body again and sit down for that first meditation even though it feels physically impossible to sit still. Let your body learn what it feels like to not be chasing something.
Let yourself finish things. That email you’ve been avoiding. The laundry in the dryer. The book you’ve started three times. Letting go of chaos and complexity means doing all the stuff from your to do list you said you were going to do but never got around to doing. Completion is grounding. And it creates trust with yourself. Push through the resistance and see just how much you can accomplish.
Create simple rituals that support your energy. Rituals are not routines. Routines are the what, rituals are the how. Allow your rituals to make your routines fun. Stretch every morning while your coffee brews. Clean to your favorite playlist. Light a candle before you sit down to write. Find something that makes your routine sing and allow that simplicity to multiply.
Make space—and don’t rush to fill it. It’s okay to be bored. To wander. To have afternoons without plans. Simplicity isn’t about having nothing to do. It’s about no longer needing to escape yourself.
Pause. Breathe before you react. Sit before you scroll. Listen before you speak. You don’t have to earn stillness. You just have to let it be.
We’re so used to being busy that the absence of something to do feels wrong.
But it’s not wrong. You’re just not used to it.
Let that unfamiliar feeling expand you. Let it guide you into the beauty beneath the noise. Let simplicity show you that the void is not empty, it’s full of possibility.
The Leap into the Void
Every day around 10 am, I finish my to-do list and leap into the void.
I let myself fall through the many, many possibilities that exist in a day without chaos or complexity. I allow the simplicity of my life to ring out, clear as a bell, and bring me peace in its wake. I don’t try to see what’s coming—I just live in the ever-present now.
My half-finished coffee reminds me there’s still a day to be lived, and in the space left over, I pursue the things that make me feel most alive.
I’m teaching myself how to sew. I’m finishing the books on my TBR list. I’m cooking healthy, nourishing meals.
And I’m also sitting a lot—in silence and stillness.
Giving myself permission to do something I didn’t know I could:
Absolutely nothing.
I thought I had to go looking for myself in order to find her—but that simply wasn’t true. All I had to do was be, and she found me.
So if you’re standing at the edge of your own empty space—if you’ve cleaned the house, crossed everything off the list, and are wondering what now—don’t rush to fill it.
Let the stillness show you something new.
Let the void invite you inward.
And when the noise returns (because it always does), you’ll know how to come back to the quiet again.
To the simplicity.
To yourself.
This Week’s Journaling Prompt:
When was the last time you did absolutely nothing? How did it feel in your body? Were you happy to sit and just be, or did you feel compelled to fill the void? Both reactions are totally normal. Your job right now is simply to observe. '
And if it has been a while since you did nothing, see if you can schedule some time this week to sit in silence and just be.
And don’t forget to share this newsletter with someone who loves talking about voids.
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