Freedom
Your Day Off Does Not Need a Performance Review
Imagine reaching the end of a pleasant afternoon and beginning the audit.
What did you get done? Did you learn anything? Was the walk long enough to count? Could that time on the porch have been used to organize a drawer?
The afternoon was going well until it had to explain itself.
There is nothing wrong with enjoying an accomplishment. Finishing a project can be satisfying. So can taking a class, training for something or finally solving the household problem that has been making a small noise for six months.
But enjoyment can become difficult to recognize when every hour has to produce evidence.
A 2021 paper by Gabriela Tonietto and colleagues examined beliefs about leisure across four studies. People who viewed leisure as wasteful reported less enjoyment, especially when an activity was pursued for its own sake. In one experiment, 351 undergraduates read either a text framing leisure as wasteful, even while describing that wastefulness positively, or a control text, then watched a funny video. The wastefulness group reported less enjoyment. [D1]
That experiment measured a brief response in a laboratory setting. It does not tell us how to fix exhaustion, create spare time or make every afternoon enjoyable. It does suggest that the judgment we bring to an activity can affect the pleasure available while we are doing it.
There is a useful everyday question here: would you still want this afternoon if there were nothing impressive to report afterward?
Perhaps you would like to read a mystery without extracting a leadership lesson. Watch the birds without starting a life list. Sit with someone whose company you enjoy without arranging an event around it.
Those are ordinary choices. They do not need to become the most restorative, enriching, intentional versions of themselves.
Of course, not everyone has an afternoon to spare. A day away from paid work may still contain caregiving, errands and the second job of keeping life running. An attitude adjustment cannot create childcare or pay a bill. The point is not to pretend the obligations are imaginary.
It is to consider what happens inside whatever portion of time is actually yours.
You might choose one small pleasure and let its immediate appeal be the reason. Read the next chapter because you want to know who did it. Take the familiar route because you like that garden. Stay on the porch a little longer because the light is lovely there.
This is an invitation, not a research-tested prescription. You may still feel restless. You may discover that a particular activity is not enjoyable at all. That is information, too. There is no prize for insisting you are relaxed when you would rather be doing something else.
Nor do you need to give up ambition to enjoy an unremarkable hour. You can care deeply about what you are building and still leave some experiences off the progress report.
At the end of the afternoon, perhaps the answer to “What did you get out of it?” can be quite simple.
You liked being there.
Sources and Additional Reading
D1 Gabriela N. Tonietto, Selin A. Malkoc, Rebecca Walker Reczek and Michael I. Norton. Viewing leisure as wasteful undermines enjoyment. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 97 (2021), 104198. Available online August 21, 2021. DOI: 10.1016/j.jesp.2021.104198. Primary paper hosted by Rutgers Business School; Study 4, sections 4.1–4.2. [https://www.business.rutgers.edu/sites/default/files/documents/tonietto-viewing-leisure-as-wasteful-undermines-enjoyment.pdf] Read source
