Down Time: Vital or Lethal?
I am sure I was not the only person to be overjoyed at the much shared opinion piece in the Times, titled “Relax, you’ll be more productive”. You can read it here: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/opinion/sunday/relax-youll-be-more-pro....
I have always been a big advocate of taking time off and resting between spurts of productivity. In my practice I work with a lot of workaholic “Type A”s who need to be reminded to use their vacation time, and I often see the spiral of exhaustion created by telling oneself “I can’t take time off now, I have too much to do.” The thing is, our work is never done, so if you keep waiting for the perfect time to rest and restore, it will probably never arrive. Rest should be part of a discipline of self-care, just like exercising and eating right. Anyway, the author of the article above explains it better, so I won’t be redundant.
Where I start to get confused sometimes is in making the distinction between “good” and bad “down” time. As in: When is being a couch potato restorative, (is it ever?) and when is it detrimental to your health? One article I recently read stated that every hour spent in front of a screen shaves 30 minutes off of your life! (See this other alarming article about the topic: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17sitting-t.html)
Case in-point, the debate about children. Are they overscheduled and overstressed, or are they whithering away in front of the multiple screens they increasingly interact with? Should we encourage our kids to do less? But then what is that “less” supposed to look like? How do we limit their screen time without overprogramming with other things? Surely I am not the only one who finds this confusing. And surely many adults are unclear about how to make the best use of their time when they do decide to take time off from the daily grind.
Taking advantage of a little unscheduled downtime while staying home with a sick child this week, I decided to contemplate how these two compelling arguments can intersect and co-exist. And here is what I have come up with:
“Good” Down Time involves the Senses:
We benefit from unplugging when we do things that reconnect us with our body and our surroundings. This takes us out of the stress rut our brain likes to gear us up for, as it seeks for constant immediate rewards like receiving a new email, or completing another task on a checklist. Engaging our senses takes us out of the self-important feedback loop that makes us think that the world absolutely cannot bear to do without our input for one second. This cognitive distortion lies rampant, and employers benefit from it greatly. Think about it. Will your workplace really collapse if you don’t show up for a couple of days? If you’re not sure what the answer is, you need to take a day off just to find out. (I promise it won’t.)
“Bad” Down Time is Time Spent Tuning Out:
Screen time has questionable benefits because it makes us less aware of our surrounding and our senses. That is why it’s important to use screen time for quality content. If what we are doing onscreen has no benefits to our mind, then we’re getting zero return on our time. Because our body certainly isn’t benefitting. We become numb, don’t notice the people and things around us, and generally stop being part of the real world. While the virtual world we are engaging with is compelling and full of wonderful resources and stimulation, it should not serve as a substitute for rest periods that engage our whole self.
We understand enough about stress now to know that stressors and tensions need to be released through the body. The worst thing for our health is a stressed-out mind combined with inertia. Sitting and reading stressful emails and completing stressful tasks at a desk all day long is an example of this. Your brain is telling your body to release the stress hormones to deal with a perceived urgent situation, but your body is sitting still, letting those hormones course through your body, tense up your muscles and increase your heart rate, with nowhere to go. Your body is getting a signal to “fight or flight”, but instead it just sits there. You know that can’t be good.
The Art Therapy Solution
Down time is vital. So please do take that day off. Please do let your kids have a night a week where they don’t engage in extra-curricular activities. But don’t spend the whole time in front of a screen. You will benefit from some screen time if you use it to replenish resources and ideas to build your free time around: finding new places to visit, new craft ideas or recipes to try, new music to listen to. But at some point these interests need to be put into action. That is how your body will truly de-stress and replenish itself.
Think of things you like to do that engage your senses. Some people find that just having some essential oils handy to sniff will provide a micro-break from work and make them feel more at peace. Kids love smells too, so you could play “guess that scent” with them for a little bit. It requires very little time to use your sense of smell to unplug.
Think about what you liked to do when you were 7 or 8. Did you like to listen to music, dance around in your bedroom? Write poetry? Bake pies? Chances are, whatever sensory activities you naturally grativated towards as a child, will feel equally rewarding today. And you can share them with your children, if you have any.
Use the computer to look up an activity you’ve been wanting to learn how to do. Youtube is a great resource for learning how to do all kinds of things. I recently learned how to make bows, 3-D paper snowflakes, and invisible ink. And that time spent on-screen translated into several hours of active creative engagement with my senses.
And the next time you feel like you need a “mental health day” from work or school, take it. Consider this post your doctor’s note.