The reason I want to celebrate this, and draw attention to Anton and the many other people who take make strategic decisions to do ‘nothing’ for a decent chunk of time, is that I think these decisions are brave, powerful and ultimately life changing in a really positive way. Let me explain why. 

1) ‘all work no play' is vastly overrated

Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian stood in front of an audience in 2018 and said “This idea that unless you are suffering, grinding working every hour of every day, you’re not working hard enough…. It’s such bulls—, such utter bulls—.”

We know through both observation and research, that many workplaces obsess around characteristics like ‘grit’ and ‘perseverance’ and ‘relentless’. Indeed I wholly respect the impact that such positive human tendencies can create… except when they burn people out, eviscerate their creativity, or destroy the fabric that holds together their family. So hustle-until-you-drop is properly over-rated as cultural attribute.

So for Anton to turn around and say ‘hey, I’m going to be with my family for a year, instead of doing work for a year’… that’s a bold statement in an era of increasing work intensity.

2) Choosing your ‘nothing’ takes a level of bravery well beyond somebody else dictating your ‘something’

Let’s be clear. Lots of people spend their professional lives absolutely bottling their ‘big questions’ and avoiding decisions that either require them to genuinely fight for something, or explain WHY they fight for something. So to choose something that professionally appears counter-intuitive, or counter-cultural, is actually quite hard.. especially when it’s just you making the decision. Whilst we like to moan about other people making decisions for us.. i.e. ‘the boss just handed me my new sales quota’… what would be even more terrifying is if we had to take full responsibility for the decisions we made and the context they sat in… i.e.. ‘The Board just asked me to nominate my own sales quota, and why that number makes commercial sense to our shareholders AND our customers.’  

Whilst we publicly loathe being dictated to, we secretly love the fact many of the ‘big decisions’ are apparently in the hands of other people… Unless you’ve been made redundant, or some other structural exernal factor turns your hand, choosing YOUR nothing over somebody else’s something, is actually pretty tough 

3) what you say is important often shows up very differently to how you do important

Do you carry your children around and chuckle with them every 38 seconds? Do you take your child to the toilet with you, captivated by their antics? Do you look at your child every morning first thing, and last thing at night? Very committed parent if you do. Substitute ‘mobile device’ here for ‘child’ and check the answer again. But I bet if I said to you ‘what do you care most about in your life’… chances are you would say your partner, your family, your children, your pet. But do you actually live like they are the most important thing to you? Or do you live like the processes and systems of control that have accidentally integrated you are actually the most important things in your existence, and your family are a hazy second place that you escape to (in the best of circumstances) or possibly actually sometimes resent (in rather more dire circumstances).

Anton said his family were important. For as long as I have known him, he said they were important. And then for a whole year, they went off on one long, messy, fun, rollicking, romantic, terrifying, awe-inspiring adventure. That’s how he did important.

So in conclusion the point of this article is nothing other than the perverse fact that in our modern professional lives, it actually sometimes truly takes courage to choose our ‘nothing’ over somebody else’s something. But in the act of deeply thinking through what our nothing might be, and what it might truly mean to us, we realise that we have the power of choice not only in our destination, but also in our journey.