Deep Leisure
Cal Newport’s book Deep Work drastically altered my work habits. In his book, the MIT PhD divides work into two categories: deep and shallow. He defines deep work as:
“Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate.”
In contrast, shallow work consists of tasks that you can be performed while being distracted, like emails, meetings etc. Professor Newport argues that working deeply is becoming increasingly valuable as the world gets more distracted and the few who cultivate this skill will thrive.
Although working deeply is cool, the book got me thinking about how I should use my leisure time to live a more fulfilling life. I’ve come to realize that leisure also comes in shallow and deep forms. To lead a fulfilling life we should engage in the latter rather than the former.
What is Deep Leisure?
In my quest to define deep leisure, I began reflecting on my first two years of college to pinpoint my most enjoyable memories. Unsurprisingly, they involved spending time with friends, nights out in the city or long walks in nature. Unsurprisingly, I did not have a single cherished memory using social media. Surprisingly, I had been spending 2+ hours/day browsing Instagram, Twitter or Facebook. This blew my mind.
2 hours of social media a day during college meant that I had spent 1400+ hours on various platforms. Yet, I could not recall a single fulfilling, memorable or enjoyable “social media session” (if that even exists). If social media epitomizes shallow leisure, what is deep leisure? According to me:
Deep leisure consists of fun activities that allow you to be completely immersed in the present moment. These activities help you create memories that you will cherish over your lifetime.
In case you need some concrete examples:
- Social media is shallow leisure whereas time spent in real life with friends and family is deep leisure
- Twitter and blog posts are shallow leisure whereas books are deep leisure
- TikTok,YouTube and Quibi videos are shallow leisure whereas movies, documentaries and TV shows are deep leisure
My argument isn’t that we should eliminate shallow leisure entirely. Instead, we should spend as little time engaging in shallow leisure as possible.
Why do we engage in shallow leisure?
You may ask, “Well Angad, if shallow leisure is so bad, why do we spend so much time engaging in it? Surely it can’t be that bad if everyone is doing it so often.” After some reflection, I was able to uncover a few reasons why I spend so much time on shallow leisure activities.
1. It’s easy — scrolling through Facebook is a lot easier than video-calling/ hanging out with a friend. Your friend may not be free when you are. Similarly, scrolling through Twitter is a lot easier than reading a book. Reading a book would require you to read reviews, buy a copy and take at least 20 minutes out of your day whereas your Twitter feed takes one tap to access. Deep leisure requires thought.
2. It’s really fucking addictive — Most digital products are intentionally designed to take up as much of your free time as possible by manipulating your brain chemicals. There are thousands of product designers at TikTok and Instagram whose job is to figure out how to give you constant hits of dopamine. If this idea is new to you, check out this TED talk by a designer at Google.
3. It’s normalized in society — Since everyone around us is so hooked to these products, we don’t question whether they truly benefit us. We just assume that these products improve our lives.
Transitioning toward deep leisure
I understand that we cannot cut off shallow leisure completely. It helps facilitate deep leisure and sometimes we just don’t have any other option to pass time. But as much as possible we need to move away from shallow activities to deep. We need to reflect on how we spend our time and re-evaluate what is/isn’t valuable for us.
In my efforts to maximize deep leisure, I permanently deleted all my social media accounts a week ago. This includes the deletion of a Facebook account I’ve had since I was 10. Check out next month’s blog post for an update :)
