Ever thought about how you take a break? How to maximize the relaxation and pleasure of having some time off? Or maybe just think that with all your free time, you could be more productive (well, someone around here must have a little extra time on their hands)?

If you’re like me, you don’t have a lot of free time, no thanks to websites like Facebook that take just a minute to check, but collectively in a day saps away a lot of time.  When I have free time, I usually fill it with whatever is at hand: computer games, video games, answering e-mails, reading the paper—the things I would otherwise do if I had enough time in the day.

Does this method sound familiar to you? If it doesn’t, you either have no free time and have better things to do in a day than read the back page editorials in a small college paper, or perhaps you have too much free time and don’t need to worry about how you spend it.

Of all of you still with me, I think we’re missing the point when it comes to relaxing in our free time. We do the things we would otherwise do in the day, and even if we decide we’re just going to put our feet up, those other things keep bouncing around in our heads just enough to distract us from what we’re actively trying to avoid.

Playing video games or using the internet really isn’t a break: we are still balancing outcomes, calculating risks, composing and executing; these are tasks that require our attention and mental processing. If we’re really trying to take a break, we sure aren’t doing a good job of it.

Imagine if there were some switch in the back of your head you could just flip and fall asleep—wouldn’t we all love that?  OK, so if it were a switch, other people could turn it on and off, and even if all we had to do was “think” it, I can still imagine times when we’d accidentally turn it on (imagine if you were acting on stage and your character took a nap in the script… or maybe you are getting a little tired in class and thinking about how nice it would feel to close your eyes just for a minute), but in this ideal world, we could also get over these shortcomings.  You could say to yourself, “Take a 15-minute nap,” and it would happen!

Oh, if only our brains were more like a machine and less like cluster of almost-random firings of electricity.  But alas, we hold no such control. We must be wired to worry, to be constantly perceiving and analyzing data, as if some remnant of our animalistic past that was meant to keep us alive now keeps us from avoiding it.
Don’t construe that as saying we cannot or should not take breaks or relax; think of how horrible a life that would be! But maybe we could take a cue from our bodies and try to relax more effectively.

If we must do something (although I’ll be at the head of the line when the auto-nap machine comes out) we might as well do things of any consequence.

Things that will make us feel better after doing them.  Although I may take momentary satisfaction from wiping out the Nazis once again in a video game, I can’t say I look back on that time as productive or well-used.  Instead, it feels like a momentary lull in the flurry of activity of my day, as if I’m just keeping my brain going while I wait for the next thing to arrive.

As many of you can guess, I try to do things I “should” do, like wash dishes, clean my room or write when free time arises. My roommates will be the first to tell you than this is often not the case for me personally, but I try. And when I actually do it, I feel good.  Am I more relaxed after doing it?  Actually, yes. Those three or four odd tasks that are left on the back burner are always the ones that feel great to remove, and if you think about it, not only are they some of the most satisfying things to cross off the list, but they’re also the easiest!

So until something comes along where I can shut off my brain for a power nap, I don’t see many alternatives.  Should we mull about during our free time, trying to avoid what we would otherwise be doing, or should we actually get something easy done, letting us focus on the bigger issues when we have to? On the flip side, if there’s nothing on that to-do list, there’s also nothing to do, and we all know how liberating those few moments in life are when we don’t have to keep (at least a mental) to-do list at all.  It is a nice goal to have in mind when we’re relaxing, anyway.