It seems that everywhere in the modern world, there’s an impetus to make the most of every spare moment you’re given. Maximising ‘productivity’ might help you to make the most of your time, but only in quite a narrow sense. What if this fixation is misplaced, and we’ve forgotten the value of simply doing nothing with our time? What if, rather than feeling guilty about wasted minutes and procrastination, we simply give ourselves the freedom to sit back and relax – even if it’s just for a few hours?
Rest is Not a Reward — It’s a Requirement
The first thing to bear in mind is that no human being can be at the grindstone indefinitely. Occasionally, it’s a good idea to take a step back and reflect on what you’ve experienced. This is particularly important if you’re trying to build a skill. When there’s no time to process the information, your brain is taking it; there’s no time to build the neural connections you need to actually improve.
Active rest, including sleep, is a critical part of the way your brain works. Without it, you’ll struggle to flourish.
Unstructured Time Doesn’t Need Justification
Despite all of that, there’s a school of thought that says that unstructured free time would be worthwhile even if it didn’t bring any benefit at all.
It’s becoming increasingly difficult to describe our time spent lounging, daydreaming, or lying down on the grass and staring up at the sky without reference to the utility that these activities provide. Your downtime isn’t just worthwhile because it will make you a better person, or provide some other neurological or spiritual benefit. Downtime is an end in itself and therefore needs no justification!
Schedule ‘Nothing Time’ and Actually Protect It
If you lead a very busy life, then you might be tempted to fill in every available waking hour with activity. This temptation might be particularly pressing if you’re working for yourself or if you take time off work but just stay in your home.
Getting around this is often a matter of simply setting aside the time you need to rest. This might mean leaving a given hour of every day free, or it might mean booking a holiday, during which you can really switch off. This doesn’t mean you have to go away and sit on a beach; if you prefer to move, then book a trip. The idea of getting away is to do what you want to do when you want to do it, without a feeling of guilt that you aren’t being traditionally productive. Any activity holiday you choose is personal to you, what you like and what you want to spend. Cheap ski holidays are a great choice for a mix of activity and rest, while on beach holidays you’ll often find yourself a lot more horizontal, and city breaks require a lot of walking.
Your choice of leisure activity should be governed not by what you think will improve you but by what you actually enjoy. You might set aside the copy of War and Peace in favour of something more approachable. The right familiar music, sitcoms, or magazines might offer you a way to unplug.
Create a Space That Invites Rest
If you have a space that’s actually designed to support relaxation, then you might have a much easier time relaxing. Throws, warm lighting, and bean bags can all contribute to such a space – even if it’s just a small corner of a larger living area, or office.
Stop Turning Everything into a Project
In many cases, you can get more out of a given activity by approaching it like a work-related project. You might take a notebook with you to the squat rack at your gym. You might even sit down with your spouse and talk about where your marriage is going and how you’d both like to get there.
But when every aspect of your life is a journey toward some distant goal, and every time you close the distance, you set your sights on a new and faint horizon, then you might never give yourself permission to actually enjoy the journey.
The irony is that this goal-oriented approach to life might rob you of the motivation to actually progress. If you pick up a pencil and draw every day because you like to draw, then you’re more likely to get better at drawing than if you force yourself to draw in spite of your boredom and dissatisfaction.
Accept That Not Everyone Will ‘Get It’
Many of us place a great deal of importance on the esteem of others. Consequently, we might fail to take a break out of fear of being accused of laziness. But this is often a mistake. For one thing, your peers might not view you in the way you suppose. For another, it wouldn’t matter if they did!
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