The first thing I did when I finally had nothing to do was check my phone.

No, it didn’t ring. It was face down beside me. I had left it there deliberately because I wanted to spend the afternoon doing absolutely nothing, which had sounded like a beautiful idea about three hours earlier. Then I picked it up.

WhatsApp. Nothing. Email. Nothing. Instagram…. I closed it almost immediately. Put the phone back down. About four minutes later, I picked it up again.

That was when I realised I might not actually know how to do nothing.

I had no inspection that afternoon. No client waiting for me. No property video to shoot. Nothing had happened at the apartment that needed my attention. My driver had not called to say “Madam call your gate”. Nobody was waiting for a reply that would change the direction of their day.

It was just an empty afternoon, empty.

And apparently, I found that deeply uncomfortable.

I got up to get water. Came back and sat down. Then stood up again because I remembered I had not replied to a message from earlier that morning. I replied. Checked if the person had seen it. They had not.

Now I was irritated.

At that point, I had to laugh at myself because what exactly was the problem?

I think we have started treating an empty day like bad news.

If you are busy, at least you have something to say when somebody asks how your day went. “I’ve been running around.” “I haven’t even sat down.” “I’m exhausted.”

For some reason, exhaustion has become proof that the day meant something.

But tell someone you stayed in bed until noon, ordered food, watched something completely useless and spent forty minutes staring at the ceiling and watch how quickly you begin defending yourself. “I needed the rest.” “I’ve actually been very busy.” “I don’t normally do this.”

Why?

Who are we trying to convince?

I have been thinking about that because I am not naturally good at rest. I like the idea of it more than I actually like doing it.

There is always something I could be doing. A message I could send. A property I could post. A client I could follow up with. An email I could answer.

Part of me always believes there is one more thing between me and the life I want.

And I suppose that is what ambition looks like from the outside.

From the inside, though, it can look a lot like refusing to sit with yourself.

I noticed this properly one afternoon when I had done everything I needed to do and still felt guilty.

Hmm, interesting..

Not because I had forgotten something. I had checked, everything was fine.

I just did not feel fine about not being needed.

I picked up my phone again.

Still nothing.

And the strange thing is, I know I am not the only one.

A lot of us say we want more time and then panic when we finally have it. We want a holiday, then answer emails by the pool. We complain that nobody leaves us alone, then keep checking whether anyone has texted. We say we are tired, but when the opportunity to rest arrives, we suddenly remember the laundry, the gym, the unread book, the business idea, the people we need to call, the life we are apparently behind on.

I do not think the problem is that we do not know how to rest.

There is a version of yourself you can avoid for an entire day by staying busy. The anxious one. The lonely one. The one who is not entirely sure what happens next. The one who has done a lot and still wants more. The one who is waiting for a message. The one who keeps refreshing something even though she knows nothing has changed.

When you are moving, you do not have to hear all of them at once.

This is probably why I like working in real estate and why it also drives me insane.

There is always movement. A client is looking. Another client is not answering. Someone wants to negotiate. Someone has changed their mind. A deal looks good in the morning and by evening you are trying to understand what just happened.

You can spend weeks working on something and watch it disappear in one phone call.

So you keep moving.

Maybe if I send this.

Maybe if I call again.

Maybe if I find another option.

Maybe if I do more.

But doing more does not always mean anything is moving.

Yes, I had to learn that part.

There are things you can influence and things you cannot. A client will either call back or they will not. A deal will either close or it will not. You can do your part beautifully and still go home with nothing.

I know because I have.

And perhaps that is why an empty afternoon feels more threatening to me than it should.

When your work teaches you that things can fall apart without warning, you begin to believe you should always be doing something to stop them from falling apart.

Even when there is nothing left to do.

I have caught myself opening WhatsApp because I was anxious, not because I needed to answer anybody.

That is a very different thing.

One is work.

I am still learning the difference.

The other day, I left my phone in another room and went to lie down. No music. No television. Nothing.

Which I thought was a very mature decision until I got up to get it less than fifteen minutes later.

Eleven minutes, actually.

I know because I checked.

I stood there looking at the phone and thought, “this is ridiculous!”

But I also understood something.

Doing nothing is not actually about doing nothing.

We do not talk about that enough..

You might have spent so much of your life chasing the next thing that you no longer know who you are without one. Maybe you have made being busy part of your personality or you genuinely do not know what you enjoy when nobody is watching and there is nothing to gain from it.

Maybe the reason rest makes you uncomfortable is not because you are lazy but because you have built your whole life around proving that you are not.

I have kept that thought.

Because yes, I do want a big life. I want to be successful. I want to become one of the biggest realtors in Abuja. I want my name to mean something when people hear it. I am not pretending I do not.

But I am beginning to wonder what kind of life I am building if I have to escape it every time there is a free afternoon.

I don’t have the answer yet.

I just know that the afternoon I had planned to do nothing became the afternoon I noticed how difficult that was for me.

And since then, I have been trying something new.

Leaving my phone alone for longer than eleven minutes.

It is going terribly.

But I think I am getting somewhere.

Some of the most important things in my life have happened after I stopped trying to make the day useful.

I have a feeling we will come back to that.

So let me ask you something.

When was the last time you had nothing to do and did not immediately try to fix it?

Written by Joy O. Amadasun

Founder & Head Broker · Held Olive Realty Ltd. · Abuja Real Estate

MARGIN is Joy Amadasun’s personal editorial journal on real estate, life and everything in between.