Blogpost on leisure

This was a very difficult assignment to do at this point in the semester. Stress is hard to avoid this close to finals week, and especially with the number of essays and tests getting thrown into the last few weeks. So to try and forget about homework and studying for an hour, I went and worked on a hobby project. I’ve found that working with my hands is one of the most effective ways for me to get absorbed in a task and forget about sources of stress. Unsurprisingly though, it was hard to completely let go of all the other priorities. What started off as a nagging in the back of my mind kept getting stronger as time went on. It wasn’t until took a moment to address the root causes of this nagging that I was able to better enjoy the free time.

One of the first realizations I made was that while most of the items in my to-do list were important academically, few of them had an effort limit. Tests are an excellent example of this. An ideal student would study test material until they feel confident in their abilities. What does confident mean though? One could always feel more confident with more studying, but it isn’t realistic to keep studying forever. Ultimately, the need to study has to be evaluated against the importance of other needs. Unfortunately, this can be a difficult evaluation to make without any guidelines. This effect seemed similar to criticism of the Netflix and the Virgin Group’s so called “unlimited vacation policies”. Touched on in the chapter, these policies allow employees of these corporations to take as much vacation time as they want as long as they continue to perform their duties effectively. Many experts claim, however, that this vagueness actually results in employees taking less vacation time than they would in the past. The effect of non-definite goals is an unbounded workload. Given the difficulty in self-assessing knowledge, many students (myself included) just study up until the test beings.

The second realization was that I had no good idea of how to judge the value of my leisure time. I’m sure that to some degree this comes down to long term goals. In the long term, I want to succeed in college so that I can pursue a career in a field that I find interesting, and have enough resources to spend my future leisure time doing other activities I enjoy. How do I compare the value of long term goals to the short term though? I feel that many in our society eventually become so ingrained in the “work hard now to be able to play hard in the future”, that they never actually make that final transition. Additionally, the ability to relax in the future is never guaranteed. Many work hard their entire lives but still struggle financially. Surely some kind of compromise is best, where one is able to enjoy some fulfilment throughout all parts of their life? I feel like this compares well to the “treadmill effect” discussed in the text. Society spends its days working towards goals that constantly change and require more effort, never actually gaining any satisfaction. There is undoubtedly some amount of social pressure involved in this as well. Nobody wants to fail relative to their peers, and that element of competitiveness contributes to the cycle. It would obviously be desirable to avoid this tendency. The benefits of leisure time can of course extend beyond simple enjoyment; it is practically common knowledge that lowered stress makes you more effective in other activities.

Returning to my efforts to complete the assignment, eventually  I got tired enough of worrying that I stopped caring as much about the work I had to do, and tried just focused on the present. I don’t know if the act of consciously lowering the importance of other academic tasks is a solution or just avoiding the problem, but it was much more effective than trying to simply ignore the stress. I decided I would spend a certain amount of time working on the project I enjoyed (treating that time as a sunk cost), and then re-evaluate after that was done. Overall, I was impressed with how satisfying it was to work on something completely unrelated to school for a while. I felt fully engaged with the subject matter I was working with (something I can’t always say with homework assignments or lecture), and the time passed much more rapidly than I was expecting. I still don’t have a good way to quantify the benefits of leisure time. However, unlike many of the other tasks on my list, I can set limits on how long I choose to engage in this time, something which makes it easier to incorporate into everyday life.