We finish work, close the laptop and finally have time for ourselves. Yet after scrolling through our phones, watching TV or doing whatever we feel like, we may still feel mentally tired. Why doesn’t free time always leave us feeling rested?
1.Free Time Can Still Be Full of Stimulation
At work, stimulation is often unavoidable: messages, meetings, decisions and problems demand our attention. When work ends, we can finally choose what to do. We might watch TV, scroll through our phones or look for something enjoyable after a long and tiring day. We may seek more stimulation to escape the boredom or discomfort of slowing down
It’s like buying chocolate after a difficult task. The chocolate offers an immediate reward, and we enjoy choosing it ourselves. But feeling good in the moment isn’t necessarily the same as feeling rested afterwards. It only satisfies our desire for an immediate reward with illusional feeling good without helping us recover.
Research exploring boredom in the digital age suggests that turning to digital media for relief doesn’t always work as intended: switching between content can sometimes leave us feeling even more bored [1].
2.Your Attention May Never Fully Settle
The way we engage with stimulation matters, too. We watch a show while checking messages, move between videos or pick up our phones whenever something new catches our eye. Yet research suggests that switching between videos and fast-forwarding through them can leave us more bored and less satisfied than watching them more continuously [2].
As we explain in When Your Mind Runs Out of RAM, switching also makes our attention work harder. We may enjoy each activity individually, yet frequently jumping between them can leave us less satisfied with the experience as a whole.
3.Free Time and Mental Rest Are Two Different Things
Having time without responsibilities doesn’t guarantee that we feel mentally rested. Unfinished tasks, tomorrow’s plans and thoughts about the day can continue occupying our minds.
You probably wouldn’t finish an intense gym session and immediately start another demanding workout just because it was fun. You’d recognize that your body needs time to recover. However after a day of mentally demanding work, we may fill our free time with more activities that compete for our attention. Could we be overlooking the need for mental recovery simply because these activities are enjoyable and easy to access?
Try This: Add a Two-Minute Delay
The aim isn’t to resist every urge. It’s to create a small friction between wanting something and acting on it. Research on a smartphone intervention found that adding a short delay and a reflective prompt helped interrupt automatic app-opening behaviour [3].
The next time you feel the urge to check your phone or open another app, wait two minutes. You can still do it afterwards. Use the pause to notice whether you genuinely want the activity or are simply looking for something to fill the moment.
Try this for at least a week and let us know your thoughts through our contact form.
Pause for a minute.
Let the thought settle.
You don’t need another article.
Take it with you and go back to your life.
References
[1] Tam, K. Y. Y., & Inzlicht, M. (2024). People are increasingly bored in our digital age. Communications Psychology.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s44271-024-00155-9
[2] Tam, K. Y. Y., & Inzlicht, M. (2024). Fast-forward to boredom: How switching behavior on digital media makes people more bored. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.
https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001639
[3] Grüning, D. J., Riedel, A., & Lorenz-Spreen, P. (2023). Directing smartphone use through the self-nudge app one sec. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).