How Intentional Leisure Can Help You Reclaim Your Pace
Drowning in bed, I have been feeling wasted and restless a lot lately. There are moments I find ideas bombarding my mind, and the minute I try to put them into my notepad, all vanished. I feel brain depletion.
Exactly a month ago, I had been enjoying a burden-free life — no college, no assignments, and no hectic exams. I was in a gap year because of my financial condition.
The instant I entered the environment of competition and success at everything you do, my energy started depleting. Getting up ridiculously early to attend classes for 5 hours straight upto waking up for side hustle until midnight had terribly shaken me upside down.
Moreover, the thought that I was not doing more and better was freaking me out while sucking my creativity and productivity.
Not only did it award me the feeling of worthlessness, but also it underscored my progress that I’m not doing good enough to be appreciated. I was exhausted, and I felt the need to drop it out for some time.
The Wrecking Idea of Doing More is Evolving as a Trendy Ritual
I had been chasing productivity masters a lot lately, and the toxic ritual they have created of doing more has eaten up my leisure a lot of times.
Imitating them, I used to add more things to my to-do lists but wasn’t able to accomplish much. And the lesser I was able to achieve, the more it disappointed me.
“More is Less.”
The idea of being productive by maintaining a journal, managing tasks through a calendar, and cross-checking tasks in your to-do list is the most wasted things I ever did. Because honestly, it wasn’t efficiently working for me.
Productivity = Do more?
Chasing productivity to a blind extent can lead to investing yourself in things that aren’t much necessary to do.
For instance, you’re not interested in journaling, but for the sake of productivity, you force yourself to do and respect the verdict of your ideal productivity masters.
It would not lead to anything profitable but a wrecking disappointment that would constantly devastate you for not meeting up with the unrealistic expectations that you’ve set imitating gurus.
“There are two ways to be happy: improve your reality or lower your expectations.” — Jodi Picoult
Instead of spending hours making various routines, to-do lists, vision board, and eventuating tasks into a calendar to accomplish them on time, which seems a very big deal to me, I simply visualize my priorities which only includes
- Read regularly
- Writing upto 700 words a day
- Studying for 2 hours straight with sheer focus.
The above three are seriously important to me. And my priorities don’t include using social media for 1 hour, making the bed, brushing teeth, and scrolling feeds. These are quotidian that happen daily, and I don’t feel the need to make to-do lists for such things anymore. It saves me a sufficient amount of time to calm and recharge myself up.
“It’s surprising how much free time and productivity you gain when you lose the busyness in your mind.” — Brittany Burgunder
Slow Down to Speed Up
Wake up early, be more productive, grind and hustle in your free time are norms that many of us are actually familiar with.
Thanks to all the influencers, entrepreneurs, and productivity gurus who have used Elon Musk’s work ethic as a role model and a success ingredient to sell their productivity business.
“One thing I am learning is to slow down. Multitasking is great, but when I try to do everything at warp speed, I just end up with typos and stress.” — Ayana Mathis
The productivity world has fostered a crazy idea of never slowing down. It has reached the point where planning, organizing, and ideating the process seems more important than putting yourself to actually work, which increases the inputs for identic outputs. And it seems kind of unfair to me.
Grind now, shine later? Can we please grind and shine at the same time?
Perceiving the ravishing success and appreciation of others who emphasis grinding as the sole success ingredient, I was trying to be much harder on myself all of a sudden. I was monotonously pushing myself to produce more and get more things done.
Besides, I was ridiculously ignoring my health, family, and friends while giving more hours to things that barely returned me anything of value.
The antidote to the "always hustling" mindset is "slowness."
Here are some things that I’ve applied recently and slowed down to reclaim my pace —
- 15 minutes of break after every 45 minutes of work is a wrong idea — If I apply this phenomenon practically while writing, I would barely be able to draft my thoughts. Taking breaks in between hinder my pace, suck my flow, and devour my energy. Instead, I prefer to take a day off from everything — be it studying or writing. Chilling out till midnight and binge-watching endlessly for a day reprograms me for better. I truly feel myself and the urge to work with boundless excitement.
- Reward yourself with leisure — Imagine a job where there is no reward and appreciation for the efforts you put in. It would not excite you to work harder, and you’ll start losing enthusiasm. Rewards and appreciation are those things that reenergize us with positive feelings to give our best. And this thought of rewarding myself with wonderful leisure to be as vulgar as I could rejuvenate me.
- Take control over your consumption — Since recently, I have made sure I don’t use social media on leisure to control my content consumption. This is because social media has a lot to feed us. There are infinite contents we consume on a daily basis that inadvertently consume most of our time. And by deferring to use it for a day help me maintain a balance.
Overconsumption isn’t good for health.
Free time is what we crave the most to enjoy the life that we truly desire. At least I do. There’s no reward bigger than leisure that contains an entire fun package in it for me. It helps me liberate stress out of work and academics pressure, improve my performance and thinking process, rejuvenate motivation and energy, reprograms decision making and concentration power.
Final words
I had a lot of long road trips and the best part about it was the breaks I used to take in between the rid. That experience of clicking pictures of the beautiful views, playing against the wind, and impulsively eating at roadside shops without caring much about weight and diet is what made the road trip a remarkable and unforgettable moment.
That goes with life too!
Having small but sufficient and intentional leisure after exhausting days to do the things you actually want to do will make your life sparkle with happiness and cheerfulness — no matter you waste binge watching for 10 hours straight or drown in bed the whole day.
Else imagine a road trip of 12 hours long without a break. Wouldn’t it freak you out? Wouldn’t it make you dead exhaustive?
“Because the greatest part of a road trip isn't arriving at your destination. It’s all the wild stuff that happens along the way.” — Ema Chase
