July 27th, 2007 in Featured, Lifestyle

Why Your Free Time is Boring

How do you spend your off hours? Do you watch television? Do you surf the web? Read articles here at Lifehack.org? There are many ways you can spend your leisure time. But is it really possible to get more out of your time off? Not just making this time more productive, but actually making it more enjoyable.

Breaking the Work/Play Distinction

I believe the answer goes against what many of us have been taught about how to spend our free time. From early childhood we’ve been taught to divide everything to do into two groups, work and leisure. Work consists of all the things we need to do and leisure is everything else.

Splitting the world this way isn’t necessarily wrong. But the subtle message contained in this split is that work and leisure shouldn’t resemble each other. Your work needs to be productive, efficient and challenging. Therefore leisure should be relaxing, accomplish nothing and be free of pressures.

Why This Kills Your Free Time

The problem is this assumption, that work should be the opposite of leisure, ruins your free time. The belief that the most enjoyable moments of life are spent relaxing in the fruits of our labor doesn’t match the real world. Research has shown that the most enjoyable moments of our life are the ones where we are most engaged.

Psychology researcher Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi recorded this phenomenon. He did this through a device that pinged at random points in time. The subject then filled out a form based on their feelings, thoughts and current activity. What he found was people have more enjoyable experiences from work than from their time off. He mentions this paradox in his book, Flow:

“Thus we have the paradoxical situation: On the job people feel skillful and challenged, and therefore feel more happy, strong, creative and satisfied. In their free time people feel that there is generally not much to do and their skills are not being used, and therefore tend to feel more sad, weak dull and dissatisfied. Yet they would like to work less and spend more time in leisure.” [emphasis mine]

I believe the dissatisfaction for work stems from the external need to work. Since we cannot exercise freedom in choosing to show up every morning, it is easy to begrudge the time there. Even if it produces positive experiences in our lives.

The Answer Isn’t Becoming a Workaholic

I don’t believe the resolution of this problem, is to work all the time. I think that would only exacerbate a situation where people feel trapped by oppressive work schedules. Even if jobs can produce, challenging flow experiences, putting all your eggs into one basket can be risky.

Instead, Fill Your Spare Time With Active Leisure

Active leisure is free activities you choose that challenge and fulfill you. But because you take up these tasks through internal desires, not external constraints, you won’t feel trapped by them.

Many people have found ways to incorporate active leisure into their lives. Taking up hobbies, sports and learning new skills even when time is limited. But as the standard forty hour workweek gets pushed longer and passive entertainment becomes easier to consume, it is harder to take up active leisure.

Leisure is Hard Work

Upgrading your leisure time to make it more enjoyable isn’t always easy. This may sound backwards, since many people believe the purpose of leisure is to be easy. But sometimes the benefits of being active in your time off aren’t immediately apparent.

Activity requires that you invest your attention. The body was designed to be efficient, not enjoyable, so it may resist your attempts to invest energy in anything non-essential.

How to Start the Active Leisure Habit

There are many ways you can upgrade your leisure time, but it requires effort. Unlike watching television or relaxing, opportunities for flow need to be structured in advance. It can sometimes require planning and always requires an initial push of momentum to get started.

I suggest an experiment. Try replacing some low-energy task with a more engaging one. Continue it for a month. After that month, if you don’t feel the new task is more satisfying than your old usage of time, quit. This is about enjoyment, not productivity, so you don’t need to feel guilty if you decide to switch back later.

Suggestions for Active Leisure

Here are a couple ideas to get the ball rolling:

Join Toastmasters - At toastmasters.org you can find clubs near your location. There are thousands of them and they are a great experience. I’ve known many people who tell me Toastmasters is the highlight of their week.
Start a Craft - Try learning a new hobby or restarting an old one. Painting, woodworking, sculpting, programming or blogging are all great starts. Buy a tutorial book to get you started and learn from there.
Play Sports - Find a physical activity that will get you to move and provides a challenging environment. Not only will this keep you healthy, but it will put your mind into a state of flow more easily than sitting on the couch.
Learn a New Language - Challenge yourself to learn a new language. This has always been a goal of mine. I’ve heard from many sources that it can be both challenging an enjoyable to gain fluency in a non-native tongue.
Play a Game - Computer games and interactive entertainment can be great ways to produce flow. Although you can get addicted to the enjoyable environment, structuring a small amount of time to play games can engage you mind to have fun.
Start a Project - One of my personal favorites is to get a new project going. Starting a project to complete something over the course of a couple months can be exciting and incredibly rewarding. Go start that novel you’ve been thinking about.

WRITER'S BIOGRAPHY

Scott H Young

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46 Responses

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Comments

OG says on July 28th, 2007 at 1:05 am

just cause all of my time is free time.
Brant Tedeschi says on July 28th, 2007 at 1:36 am

That is a great article. This is basically everyone’s mindset that I know. I think its pretty pathetic that people feel better at work (but don’t know it) but complain about it anyway. Then when they are home, they complain that they are bored. Madness.
bryan says on July 28th, 2007 at 1:47 am

I’ve only recently discovered this phenomenon in my own life. After I graduated from college, I took on a life of work (which was challenging). But outside of work, my favorite activities were playing video games. This is an “easy” activity as per this article. While it was enjoyable at first, it became mundane and boring after years of doing it because it was “the thing” to do after work..

I took up martial arts. I strove to become a black belt in Tae Kwon Do. This was the first step to the happiness I now feel. It took me 10 years to only start to truly feel that leisure time was my real time to push myself. I’ve since moved on to Kung Fu, and the training involved is 500% more rigorous. I almost feel alive now, and its like a drug that I need to get everyday (if I had that time I would!!).

Don’t think I quit playing video games! I still do, but not even near the amount that I felt I needed to play when I was younger.
DNA says on July 28th, 2007 at 1:52 am

I got a second job.
DNA says on July 28th, 2007 at 1:56 am

@ bryan
Strenuous physical activity can produce endorphins that are, in fact, a drug and an addictive one, at that.
Kyle says on July 28th, 2007 at 6:55 am

Dude, whered you get that clock i like it..
Johnny says on July 28th, 2007 at 9:44 am

When I have free time I write down my dreams on matchadream.com and try to figure out what they mean.
materialBITCH says on July 28th, 2007 at 10:40 am

good stuff. shopping works for me on the leisure/relax tip. keeps me active but HAPPY!
segfault says on July 28th, 2007 at 11:21 am

I think some of the dissatisfaction with the work vs home (leisure) situation is the current disconnection of work from home.. Work makes you choose who and how you spend your day. Work needs to be better assimalated into our lives and we as workers need to be able to make our life function well. Making work just more of a part of our life, every one will be happier. I don’t need more money, I just want to be happier, every day.

I think that most professional people want to contribute as much as they can, we need to start fostering environments and attitudes to allow us so work and live and contribute without wanting to fight the “work environment”.

… ramble ramble ramble …
asif says on July 28th, 2007 at 11:36 am

loved it. nice cat clock
Kcyhenry says on July 28th, 2007 at 12:56 pm

Your article is great. it can be a good help to many people.
ray says on July 28th, 2007 at 2:58 pm

don’t forget to take time to be rather than to do. It’s ok if this is meditating at the health club or sitting in the chair with a beer looking at your back yard. Any time where you’re awake, but doing little to nothing helps too. I like the article though
Kamilah says on July 28th, 2007 at 7:54 pm

I have to say that the situation is the reverse of what’s described here, at least partially. My current job bores me terribly. I have a bachelor of fine arts degree and I’m at a bank doing a job so simple that many high school grads can do it, and because of what’s going on with the department (outsourcing and so on) there are no opportunities to move forward yet. I’ve returned to school to get a masters degree in accounting. In the meantime nothing is better than my free time. I ride my bike, I websurf, I read. I’m rarely bored with it. I need much more of it. I’d like to know what these wonderful challenging jobs are that everyone here seems to have.
Abhigyan Agrawal says on July 29th, 2007 at 7:29 am

Hi Scott,
I agree with you about active leisure, however, after a very nasty and busy week I do enjoy some time doing nothing at all and just relaxing. It charges up my batteries. Watching sunset etc. are great leisure time activity.
Peter says on July 30th, 2007 at 1:31 pm

I, and most of my friends, have jobs that are not challenging and not rewarding (except monetary). The work is just a boring repetitive thing that needs to be done to keep food on the table. I’m not sure what demographics read lifehack, but I’m starting to suspect it’s sort of ‘elitist’. Meaning that it’s mostly for people who have excellent fulfilling “high-class” job. For the rest of us I think that the spare time shared with friends is what keeps us going.
Jeanne Dininni says on August 1st, 2007 at 10:06 pm

Active leisure is indeed a great thing–as is enjoyable work! And it’s every bit as valuable to learn to love our jobs–by discovering those aspects that we can truly enjoy–as it is to liven up our leisure! Once we’ve done that, we will begin living a more balanced life.

Thanks for a great post!
Jeanne
Viliam Búr says on August 2nd, 2007 at 9:29 am

OK, when I started reading I wanted to say: No, this is nonsense; my free time is *not* boring. Well, maybe sometimes, but mostly it is good.

Now after reading the last part… well, that’s what I usually do! Projects, hobbies, learning, playing games, also learning new languages. Just one thing is missing (how could you have missed that?) — talking with friends. Social activities are fun, if you are with people who are not bored/boring.

The work is worse than this. During work I cannot freely choose what I want to do at the moment. There are many things which interrupt my “flow”. Funny thing is that once when I was missing a project deadline, I chose to stay at work on Saturday and Sunday, alone… and it was a very pleasant work experience. Because it was obvious what to do, there were no interruptions, and I had the freedom to go home at any moment… and this is what made it pleasant to stay there.

Now this is for me a puzzle — what are the other people doing that makes them bored? If they behave contrary to this article, it would mean: no sport, no games, nothing to do… what?! Are they just watching TV? What a torture!
Harveen says on August 5th, 2007 at 8:59 pm

Active leisure-what a great concept! I’ve never really thought of it that way.Simple but it makes so much sense-thank you!
itwenda says on August 22nd, 2007 at 5:17 am

thanks,very good.
John Jackson says on August 28th, 2007 at 2:35 pm

What you need is a job. That you can work, where, and when you want to. Which is hard to find. Own a business, and the possibles are endless. If you control your life. then your leisure time is more fun and maybe productive at the same time.
nurgul says on October 8th, 2007 at 11:46 am

i agree completely anyway i m looking for the one that i dont know.All of us looking for smth but we don’t know as i’m human being i m not exception
Naomi says on February 20th, 2008 at 11:52 am

it’s hard to find things to do with your liesure time when you are FLAT BROKE…. the few things that you can do for free get just as boring when you do them ALL THE TIME - i run and i do yoga on my own for free i also have been learning to play an instrument and learning another language for about a year now….. but really you can only spend so much time doing these things too