5 Things You Can Do When You Don't Know What To Do

So you don't know what to do, but you have to do something. Humans are doers--even 'being' is a verb. If you don't know what to do, you can read some of these tips and try them out--incidentally they're derived from some of the  more popular posts of this blog.

1. Stay up late: If you don't know what to do, try doing that till late into the night and see what happens. Strange things take place in the quiet of the night: you start thinking differently, ideas seem to come to you as you're in a state of half-consciousness, and by breaking your routine, you're stimulating your brain in a different way. Not to mention that it's one of the only times--if you have kids--that the house is actually quiet. 

2. Buy a book on creativity and/or innovation: Often we need a boost of fresh ideas, which can be obtained through books. If you don't know what to do, join others who have had to wrestle with not knowing what to do, but have turned that predicament into something really useful or cool or lucrative. Check out Peter Diamandis's book Abundance, or the founders of IDEO's book Creative Confidence. If you need something that will blow your mind, order up Ray Kurzweil's classic work The Singularity. 

3. Turn off the internet: Not knowing what to do can be a result of too much stimulation, especially from computers and the internet. There's such a thing as an internet hangover that creates similar symptoms to an alcohol hangover: headache, nausea, fatigue. If you don't know what to do, trying figuring it out away from what's stimulating your ennui. As well, if you don't know what to do, the last thing you need is to binge-surf on Facebook glutting your eyes on all that your 'friends' are doing. 

4. Reflect on the good stuff: Often we feel inadequate when we don't know what to do, but feel we should be doing something. It's easy to feel like a loser when you think everyone else is doing something and you're stuck doing nothing. Look inside: chances are your heart wants something different than your head. What is it that the heart wants? To call a loved one? To volunteer time with something you might need company? To give your kids a big hug and take them for ice cream? When you see what your heart wants, you'll also find gratitude, which is a big brain booster. When you are grateful, you are making new neural connections--your brain is actually growing and getting stronger. 

5. Prepare for the Future: We don't know what the future will precisely hold, but we can build scenarios and models of it and prepare for that. There are many claiming that some kind of catastrophe will strike in the next year, especially as tensions are mounting globally. If you don't know what to do, try thinking about the future and how you might get prepared for it. You can build more community and family ties, create a list of all the things you need to survive a major power outage for 48 hours, get in better shape. 

When you don't know what to do, maybe the best thing is just to sit in stillness and reflect on your life, your loved ones, your dreams and goals, and just be in the moment. By being, you're still doing. It's ok to sit in stillness for a period of time--in fact there are some great benefits. You don't have to try to solve it. Often it's when we step away from the pressure that the ideas come to us.