Lately I’ve been examining the activities I do to relax and how they might be improved. If you haven’t given much thought to this topic, Meaningful Rest is excellent background reading.
An interesting source of info for me has been lsusr’s posts on cutting out junk media: 1, 2, 3. Although I find lsusr’s posts inspiring, I’m not sure I want to pursue the same approach myself. lsusr says: “The harder a medium is to consume (or create, as applicable) the smarter it makes me.” They responded to this by cutting all the easy-to-consume media out of their life.
But when I relax, I don’t necessarily want to do something hard. I want to do something which rejuvenates me. (See “Meaningful Rest” post linked previously.)
lsusr’s example is inspiring in that it seems they got themselves studying things like quantum field theory for fun in their spare time. But they also noted that “my productivity at work remains unchanged”, and ended up abandoning the experiment 9 months in “due to multiple changes in my life circumstances”. Personally, when I choose to work on something, I usually expect it to be at least 100x as good a use of my time as random productive-seeming stuff like studying quantum field theory. So given a choice, I’d often rather my breaks rejuvenate me a bit more per minute of relaxation, so I can put more time and effort into my 100x tasks, than have the break be slightly useful on its own.
To adopt a different frame… I’m a fan of the wanting/liking/approving framework from this post.
In some sense, +wanting breaks are easy to engage in because it doesn’t require willpower to get yourself to do them. But +wanting breaks also tend to be compulsive, and that makes them less rejuvenating (example: arguing online).
My point above is that I should mostly ignore the +approving or -approving factor in terms of the break’s non-rejuvenating, external effects.
It seems like the ideal break is +liking, and enough +wanting that it doesn’t require willpower to get myself to do it, and once I get started I can disconnect for hours and be totally engrossed, but not so +wanting that I will be tempted to do it when I should be working or keep doing it late into the night. I think playing the game Civilization might actually meet these criteria for me? I’m not as hooked on it as I used to be, but I still find it easy to get engrossed for hours.
Interested to hear if anyone else wants to share their thinking around this or give examples of breaks which meet the above criteria.
Lately I’ve been examining the activities I do to relax and how they might be improved. If you haven’t given much thought to this topic, Meaningful Rest is excellent background reading.
An interesting source of info for me has been lsusr’s posts on cutting out junk media: 1, 2, 3. Although I find lsusr’s posts inspiring, I’m not sure I want to pursue the same approach myself. lsusr says: “The harder a medium is to consume (or create, as applicable) the smarter it makes me.” They responded to this by cutting all the easy-to-consume media out of their life.
But when I relax, I don’t necessarily want to do something hard. I want to do something which rejuvenates me. (See “Meaningful Rest” post linked previously.)
lsusr’s example is inspiring in that it seems they got themselves studying things like quantum field theory for fun in their spare time. But they also noted that “my productivity at work remains unchanged”, and ended up abandoning the experiment 9 months in “due to multiple changes in my life circumstances”. Personally, when I choose to work on something, I usually expect it to be at least 100x as good a use of my time as random productive-seeming stuff like studying quantum field theory. So given a choice, I’d often rather my breaks rejuvenate me a bit more per minute of relaxation, so I can put more time and effort into my 100x tasks, than have the break be slightly useful on its own.
To adopt a different frame… I’m a fan of the wanting/liking/approving framework from this post.
In some sense, +wanting breaks are easy to engage in because it doesn’t require willpower to get yourself to do them. But +wanting breaks also tend to be compulsive, and that makes them less rejuvenating (example: arguing online).
My point above is that I should mostly ignore the +approving or -approving factor in terms of the break’s non-rejuvenating, external effects.
It seems like the ideal break is +liking, and enough +wanting that it doesn’t require willpower to get myself to do it, and once I get started I can disconnect for hours and be totally engrossed, but not so +wanting that I will be tempted to do it when I should be working or keep doing it late into the night. I think playing the game Civilization might actually meet these criteria for me? I’m not as hooked on it as I used to be, but I still find it easy to get engrossed for hours.
Interested to hear if anyone else wants to share their thinking around this or give examples of breaks which meet the above criteria.