19 Comments on “Today I am Working on My Doing Nothing Skills”

1. Well, practice makes perfect. Just don’t push yourself too hard, ‘kay?

2. Hope you have a wonderful day! Doing nothing takes a supreme effort.

3. And I stopped doing nothing just to read what you were doing.
   Best get back to it, I guess.

4. Seems appropriate to post since it poped into my head immediately.

5. I highly approve.

   I will be spending the day kicking alien ass in X-Com (circa 1995).

6. And may Bob grant you slack

7. 10,000 hours – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outliers_(book)

9. I’ve seen this pattern before; it’s the cruise. All that climbing rock faces and ice skating takes a toll, which is why I favour ships where the most arduous activity is lifting a glass to my lips whilst floating in a pool…

10. Does uploading this post count as doing something? If so, you need to work harder on your doing-nothing-skills! Your failure to successfully do nothing makes you a slacker!

11. No pictures of your cats, dog, or family?

    I think you’re taking this do-nothing thing too far…

12. You do, at least, live with three experts in the field (with likely postgraduate credits of effortless cuteness, advanced sleep and human behaviour control methodology)
    @idiosynchronic – best IT-based waste of time – ever! I lost weeks to that game!

13. The Dark Side of “Do nothing today, Scorpius” whispers to me also, John. But I have classes to study for, tests to prepare for, classes to teach next week and research to advance. I simply cannot take a day off.

    Must be nice to be a fiction writer. ;)

14. Doing nothing is not a skill one can practice alone. It takes buy-in from all of those around too. I myself have mastered the art, my better half, not so much. Her, ” must do something” greatly interferes with my do nothing.

15. Try a 20 min seated meditation. Doing actually nothing is harder than is seems.
    http://www.cmhc.utexas.edu/mindbodylabpage/mbl_audio7.html

16. Harder than IT seems, although some may also find it harder than seams.

17. Everyone should be good at something.

18. erm, when you are done doing “nothing” [i am jealous!]

    who is Denise Hogan? [or, really, can anyone answer?] that’s been driving me batty, since i finally got to read Redshirts!

19. Hey Mr. Scalzi, look what I saw in my local bookshop window while I was downtown today!

    I don’t know if pictures are allowed in comments so I’ll type the URL of the picture here in case the picture doesn’t show up. It’s the ghost brigades in Hungarian: http://i50.tinypic.com/veb1g2.jpg