Friday Zen: Do nothing for 2 minutes (dot-com)
Certainly, it can't be good for me to sit here in front of a computer, stare into the screen all day and force my brain to come up ways to put the day's news into my own words. And so, as part of my New Year's resolutions this year, I pledged to get up and walk more often, to step outside for some fresh air and - literally - take a moment to close my eyes and breathe.
Now, there's a Web site for that.
It's called Do Nothing For 2 Minutes and, as the name suggests, it's all about doing nothing for two whole minutes. It's amazingly simple - a beautiful sunset picture, a rolling audio track of ocean waves and an on-screen timer that counts down the two minutes. If you touch your mouse or keyboard, the screen flashes FAIL in red and resets the timer.
I know this because I am an impatient, intense, always-on blogger who can't possibly keep my hands off of a keyboard or mouse for two whole minutes. For the record: the FAIL message forced me to keep my hands off for two whole minutes just to prove that I could. And I actually felt better at the end of that two minutes.
A tip of the hat to Techcrunch for profiling the site and its developer, Alex Tew, who is the guy that was behind the Million Dollar Homepage. Tew explained his inspiration for the site to Techcrunch:
“I had been thinking how we spend every waking minute of the day with access to an unlimited supply of information, to the point of information overload. i also read somewhere that there is evidence that our brains are being re-wired by the internet, because we get a little dopamine kick every time we check our e-mail or Twitter or Facebook and there’s a new update. So we’re all developing a bit of ADD. which is probably not great in terms of being productive.”
Certainly, Tew won't make $1 million from this site - doing nothing for two minutes includes not watching any advertisements for two minutes either - well, no real advertisements, that is. When the two-minute timer stops, it's replaced with a "Well Done" message, links to share the site on Facebook and Twitter and a link to some relaxation books on Amazon.