Chilling out as a business activity

When was the last time you took time out? Tom Valcanis shares why sometimes we all need to stop the clock – even soloists…

In one of my favourite boyhood adventure graphic novels, The Adventures of Tintin, the bumbling pair of detectives Thomson and Thompson are driving in circles around a fictional African desert. At one point, a faster car zooms past and Thomson steps out of the vehicle. Bewildered, Thompson backs up their rickety jeep and asks, “I say, why would you step out while we were moving?”

“Moving?” he says, bewildered, “that car went so fast I thought we were standing still!”

Talk to anyone born in Gen Z and Gen Alpha, and standing still is as foreign to them as it is to a shark – if they stop swimming, they literally die.

Literally literally, not figuratively literally, like post-Millennials would say.

Being still in an ever-moving world though, feels like a luxury. For a soloist like us, it’s almost unimaginable.

As a copywriter, imagination is my business. I need to cultivate it in any way I can. The wonderous inner child within me needs its treats and “atta boys,” or it’ll walk away in a huff. The adult in me will, too.

If we have a gift to share, a talent to provide, a trade to ply, we need to not only conceive of stillness but owe it to ourselves once in a while. We may cast envious stares at nine-to-fivers speaking of their lofty “annual leave” and equally mystical “time in lieu” – but if we don’t work, we don’t get paid; and if we don’t take a break, we just keep on working.

Equanimity of mind – stillness or inner peace – is a restful gap between frustration and confusion, where genius, meaning, and contentment lie.

Every month on a Friday afternoon, I attend a float tank, or sensory deprivation tank. It’s a room with a good foot of salty water and sealed off to all external sights and sounds. I float there for an hour.

“But what do you do in there?” inquiring minds ask.

I float there. I be.

Unless you’ve experienced it, it does indeed sound like BS. But, don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.

It has been linked to many health benefits such as reductions in cortisol (the stress hormone), improved sleep, muscle recovery, creativity boosting, and self-realisation.

I joke that I can cram in “a month’s worth of meditation into an hour” and to be fair, it isn’t that far from the truth. Meditating every day to establish a stillness and focus can help lower one’s blood pressure, improve creativity, and connection with oneself.

We can all benefit from stopping the world around us. Our grandparents did it – mostly because they had no other choice – and they seemed to turn out fine. Just idle time to meditate, ponder, and potter about. The philosopher Bertrand Russell once remarked, “that a great deal of harm is being done in the modern world by the belief in the virtuousness of work, and that the road to happiness and prosperity lies in an organised diminution of work.” As soloists, we can do that – if we choose to.

A good friend of mine who’s a newly minted junior at a bank cannot conceive a world where access to their own money could be forty-eight hours away – the end of Friday’s hours and the start of Monday’s. Imagine all the silly things we wouldn’t have bought if we simply couldn’t “tap and go.”

Now imagine all the rushed work we regret; time we spent online instead of with family or friends; or clarity of mind to make rational, instead of impulsive decisions: what price would you have put on that?

Now, that’s something to truly ponder.

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