How To Do Nothing For 47 Days

50 days ago I was excited to make the most of the long summer holiday, to learn significant chunks of university maths, to write articles, to finish books and games, and to update my godforsaken website. Here is why I did none of that.


47 days ago, I sat the last meaningful exam of the year. I had basically spent the last few years preparing for it but the actual exam went terribly in the end. I pushed through a week of despair and promptly discarded my sleep schedule.


I dreaded the 64-day wait until results day, but looking back the first three quarters of it seem to have flown by. I think there are two ways to make time go by quickly. One way is to make every day intense and exciting. You feel high-energy in the moment and the day goes by in a blur, but you have a story to tell afterwards. The other, more common way, is to keep the days monotonous, fragmented, and forgettable. The primary reason I think people say life speeds up as you get older is that over time, you get more comfortable, you do fewer exciting or novel things, possibly because you feel that you've already exhausted many of the possibilities, and you stop taking risks. Maybe you go to work and do basically the same thing every day, spending your free time consuming media and sleeping. Even those who do something interesting with their spare time don't seem completely immune. No matter what you do, if there's a pattern in it, the days or weeks will blend together eventually. Maybe you're completely absorbed in an ultimately frivolous endeavour, or on the other end of the spectrum you're just aimless and filling your time with whatever you can get your hands on, like I'm doing now. Many people aren't necessarily doing badly but they're not doing anything remarkable and they can let a year pass by without having anything to show for it. I'm feeling that happen to me on a much shorter timeline. I won't remember the month of July 2026 fondly. But at least I probably won't think much of it at all. Even the me of the present doesn't know what to think of it, as my journal entries have been getting shorter every day and I haven't found inspiration to write anything significant since the exam.


But what did I do?

I constructed a list of the most noteworthy things I've done in the last 47 days.

  • Actually finished exams
  • Ran a couple of 5Ks (not races)
  • Started on Abbott's 'Understanding Analysis', doing a significant chunk of university proof-based mathematics for the first time.
  • Got sick for a week
  • Played vidya
  • Watched 88 episodes of Hunter x Hunter (2011)
  • Read a couple books' worth of book
  • Visited family in London for a week and took a long and pleasant solitary walk, from North Acton to Tottenham Court Road
  • Learnt to cook properly for the first time, probably enough for university at least
  • Went on my quinquennial IKEA visit (admittedly I'm struggling now)

This isn't the worst list, but I could've done most of it in a normal 47-day block which wasn't enclosed in a summer holiday. Earlier in the year my report might have looked like this with an additional three hours a day of serious studying. That's what I'm missing now. Unfortunately, the solution isn't as simple as "locking in" and grinding through maths papers for my entire mornings. It might suffice when I'm at university but for now I simply don't have the drive to get to it. I even don't know where I'm going to university, and with one option I'll be significantly more motivated than the other, so I won't feel any forward momentum even if technically I could make more progress than I'm making now. For months I felt like I was definitely going in the right direction and momentum was on my side, but now that's gone. I'm not sure if I'm Sisyphus at the top of the mountain or at the bottom of a valley. Either way, it'll only be a local maximum or minimum point, and I know I'll have to push the boulder further at some point. I'll probably enjoy myself doing so, and I'll be excited to get to my destination. Yet at the moment I can't bring myself to push the boulder at all, whether up the hill or down it.


TL;DR: A lot of waffle to say that I had reliable forward momentum for the first few months of the year, but now that exams are done that momentum's gone and I can't get back to my old consistency.


And the exam,

The fact that the exam went awfully certainly doesn't help. Beyond not knowing where I'll be living in two months, the idea of the value of hard work has been eviscerated to me, and no matter what I do I can't forget about it. I have to avoid things, like work, which might trigger the memory, and even then I find myself thinking about it constantly. I watched the new tamago2474 video earlier today and he mentioned the exam on a whim. Son, now of all times? It plagues me as I try to fall asleep, and I've had a few nightmares because of it. It's such an omnipresent thing that the triggers are endless. Take, for example:

  • The numbers 1, 2, and 3 and the letters S and U
  • School, education, studying, maths
  • Stairs
  • University and literally anything to do with my life in two months and beyond
  • People named Eustace

I really shouldn't be using it as an excuse, but I can't help but feel that I won't get out of my slump until at the earliest results day, and if things go badly, who knows how long it will take. If I was artistically inclined I might have spent the 47 days doing something... artistic.


Exams aside, I think I've nailed down the formula to doing nothing. It's not about literally doing nothing. If you legitimately just stared at a wall for 47 days uninterrupted you'd most likely become enlightened or ascend. The solution is to do a mix of things, unable to become completely absorbed by a single task, and not giving anything the breathing room to become too interested. Do nothing which brings you closer to achieving your main goals, keeping momentum at bay. Let yourself unintentionally slide into a repetitive "routine" involving constant distractions and context shifts, possibly from checking what people younger and brighter than you are up to on Discord. As I write this, I'm only resisting the urge to web surf because I set an arbitrary deadline for finishing this article so I can publish an update without changing the dates.