Doing Nothing Is Part of the Plan

This summer, I did… not much.

Sure, I took time off from client work. We went camping. My son made an unexpected visit to the emergency room (he’s okay now). I pulled out the watercolor paints. And I had a long, ambitious list of family-life admin I wanted to conquer.

I did maybe a quarter of it.

And it drove me a little bit nuts.

The Productivity Hangover

I’m a type-A person. I like order. I like structure. I like checking boxes and moving on to the next thing. So when I found myself in August doing nothing, I didn’t feel rested. I felt guilty.

I thought rest would feel like freedom. But in reality, I’d just swapped work stress for the mental clutter of not doing enough on the home front. I wasn’t running campaigns, but I also wasn’t organizing school supplies or clearing out the digital photos or updating insurance paperwork or any of the other 83 things on my “off” list.

And that guilt sat with me, until I had a conversation with a friend and fellow marketing operations consultant. I told him I hadn’t gotten enough done. He looked at me and said:

“Maybe doing nothing was exactly what you needed to do.”

Rest Isn’t the Absence of Work. It’s Part of It.

That hit me.

As someone who builds systems for a living, I should know better. I create operational buffers for clients: padding between campaign launch dates, fallback rules for lead routing, flex in the project calendar. Because we’re human. And systems need space to breathe.

Why wouldn’t the same apply to me?

The truth is: nothing bloomed this summer. But the soil softened.

And surprisingly, once I let go of the guilt and allowed myself to be, the energy started to return, in small ways. I didn’t finish my to-do list. But I started again. On my own time. In a gentler rhythm.

What This Taught Me (and What I’ll Carry Forward)

This fall, as I dive back into client projects, community work, and mentorship with pocket nibbles consulting, I’m bringing this lesson with me and sharing it, too.

Especially for the women I mentor who are re-entering the workforce after a break or launching something new.
You don’t need to start at 150%.
You don’t need to know everything on Day 1.
You don’t need to earn your rest.

Structure can wait. First, breathe.

A Few Takeaways for the Rest-Resistant:

• Rest is productive. You may not always feel it in the moment.
  
• The guilt is normal. But it’s not the truth.
  
• Doing nothing can clear the space for something better.
  
• Build operational buffers in your work and your life.
  
• If you’re starting something new, don’t confuse stillness with failure.

So if your brain feels foggy, if your motivation is missing, or if your to-do list is untouched:
Try doing nothing.
Not forever. Just long enough to reset.

And if you’re like me, the clarity will come, one small nibble at a time.

Photo by Marsha Reid on Unsplash