“It is in the improvident use of our leisure, I suspect, that the greatest wastes of American life occur.”
– Robert Park

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience is a book by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (ranking as the #1 most complicated name on Earth) that discusses how we can discover true happiness and greatly improve the quality of our lives by controlling the information that enters our consciousness. Throughout his book, Mihaly discusses how people use their leisure time in wasteful and unproductive ways and how to instead, use your time more effectively.

I previously wrote about stopping bad habits such as using your leisure time in an unproductive manner.

Mihaly discusses his “Experience Sampling Method” and its results after testing it with over a hundred people. He found out that most people actually experience Flow – the feeling of complete engagement in an activity – while at work much more often than during their leisure time. Despite this, the majority will still tell you that they prefer to be at home being couch potatoes instead of being at work. Why is that?

There are a number of arguments that can be made here, one being that although some may enjoy work every now and then, they may find the environment often challenging to the extent that they prefer to relax and do nothing instead of dealing with that type of stress.

Mihaly further talks about how jobs are much easier to enjoy than free time. Regardless of how repetitive a task is, jobs have goals, challenges, rules, and feedback. In comparison, “free time” doesn’t have any of that. Most people don’t know what to do with their free time and seem to prefer to waste countless precious hours flipping through cable tv and consuming entertainment. That’s not to say that by consuming entertainment you should be ashamed, but that when the majority of your time is spent appreciating other people’s art and listening to other people’s music instead of creating them yourself…it’s something worth being concerned about.

What would you consider someone using their free time in an efficient way? How can you be productive using your free time?

Personally, I enjoy spending my free time on personal development. There is nothing wrong with relaxing after a hard day’s work, but it seems to be the case that once someone is alone, they cannot be alone with their own thoughts. They prefer to find some sort of stimulation which usually resorts to watching Disney movies, Netflix, watching people have their own adventures, or cheering for laundry.

These types of activities temporarily mask people’s emptiness of wasted time. Taking up habits, setting goals, and having hobbies that require skill and discipline can only lead to growth, whereas mindlessly consuming entertainment that mimic reality leads to nowhere.

The next time your weekend ends and you feel like you “didn’t really do much”, that’s a sign that you’re doing it wrong. First accept it, then do something about it.

Follow me @Marwanalshafei where I spark rainbows within people’s subconscious and make the world go round n’ round.