The Importance of “Lazy Days”
Photo by Miranda Duarte
Pushing back against hustle culture, one deep breath at a time.
When was the last time you let yourself just be lazy? Not scrolling through your Instagram, not replying to emails, and not catching up on homework or side hustles. Just you and the silence.
Chances are, it has been a while.
We live in a world that is obsessed with productivity. Hustle culture tells us our worth is tied to how much we can do, how quickly we can do it, and how publicly we can show it off. If you are not grinding, you are falling behind. If you are not monetizing your hobby, you are wasting your time. Even rest has become something to “schedule” into our Google Calendars.
But what if we stopped seeing rest as a pit stop on the way to more work—and started seeing it as something refreshing and valuable in itself? Doing “nothing” is not lazy. It is human.
Our brains are not robotic machines. We are not designed to be “on” 24/7, and pretending that we are only leads to burnout, anxiety, stress, and disconnection from ourselves and our peers. There is a certain power and clarity that comes from stillness, and a creativity in letting your mind wander. Some of our most brilliant ideas may come not from a 10-hour workday, but from a long walk in nature, a nap, or a moment of meditation.
Especially for college students, the pressure to always be productive can be overwhelming. We have to juggle classes, jobs, clubs, and the constant ping of our emails. Taking a break can feel like slacking off—and if we never make time to take a break, our minds and bodies might choose one for us, and it will probably be at an inconvenient time. But rest is not supposed to be a reward we earn after exhausting ourselves—it is a right. A necessity.
This was a tough lesson for me to learn, especially during my first year at Pacific. I felt like every moment had to be filled with something “useful”—studying, organizing, reading. I was constantly stressed, and ironically, rarely felt accomplished. Eventually, I made a commitment to normalize doing nothing, at least one day a week. I chose Saturdays. No agenda, no guilt. And slowly, it shifted my mindset. I realized that life only moves as fast as I let it. That I could take back control from the chaos of my own schedule. By choosing rest, I reclaimed control from the surrounding chaos.
When we normalize doing nothing, we reclaim something hustle culture tries to take away: the freedom to exist without justification. That means lounging in the quads without reading for class. It means letting yourself daydream on a hammock by the DUC. It means saying, “I do not feel like being productive today,” and not apologizing for it. It means recognizing that rest is a form of resistance in a society that measures us by continuous output. So here is your reminder: Take the nap. Sit in silence. Stare at the clouds. Let your mind breathe.
Because doing nothing is not wasting time; it is creating room for what really counts.