If someone asks you what you’re doing, it’s impossible to be doing “nothing.” At any time you are doing some of the following:

• breathing
• laying
• sitting
• standing
• walking
• looking
• smelling
• listening
• tasting

If you say you’re doing nothing, you probably mean you’re doing nothing productive. Or you don’t want to share what you’re actually doing. Or you’re not doing anything important, so what you’re doing can be interrupted.

Improving your answer to “What are you doing?”

Make a list of the answers you’d like to have. For example:

• writing
• relaxing
• reading
• working on a project
• exercising
• learning
• nothing important

Notice I left “nothing important” as an answer. You need time where you’re not doing anything important, where you can be interrupted.

Now take that list and highlight the items that you would call investments so you can prioritize what you want to be doing. Invest most of your time now, then you will be able to spend more time doing “nothing important” in the future.