You definitely need to relax.
Researchers asked more than 18,000 people how they liked to rest. Which sounds stressful, but led to some interesting results.
Even thinking about relaxing stresses me out.
I theoretically understand we need to regularly slow down, but I'm not good at slowing down. When I've had downtime, I've filled it with work, which is the stupidest way anyone can spend their downtime. And I always believed burnout was a thing that affected other, lazier people. Which was dumb.
Anyway, relaxing is essential. So important that a group of researchers asked more than 18,000 people to take part in a study that would definitively determine the Top Ten best ways to relax.
The Art of Rest: How to Find Respite in the Modern Age by Claudia Hammond breaks down the findings and offers insight into how people from around the world came to their answers. Best of all, she summaries the research by putting the results into a Top Ten list (with a research-laden chapter on each).
"Bear in mind that we were not looking for the activities which people found most enjoyable or that made them happiest or that they most valued," she wrote. "We were after what they found most restful. And it is notable in that context that the top five most restful activities are all often done alone. It seems when we rest, we very often want to escape from other people."
Sounds right. I don't want to straight-up plagiarize the book because you should read the book.
So let's work backward from No. 10 and give each an entirely subjective grade.
10) Mindfulness
You can't swing a yoga instructor without hitting someone trying to sell you on a new mindfulness technique. There are apps, websites, and entire sections of bookstores dedicated to the art of thinking you're doing something when you are, in fact doing nothing. While mindfulness makes the Top 10, the researchers were surprised (and seemed relieved) that it didn't chart higher.
"It's clear that it's not for everyone and, as we'll discover, it certainly isn't the panacea that it is sometimes claimed to be," she writes. "But even if you don't want to immerse yourself in it regularly, there is still plenty that mindfulness can teach any of us about how to rest. Of course, there is a strong argument that mindfulness is nothing new, that various Buddhist meditation practices from 2,500 years ago have been repackaged for the modern age without the ethical, spiritual, compassion-focused parts, and then repurposed as something that just helps us personally rather than helping anyone else."
I really want to be good at mindfulness but fall into the trap of spending too much time wondering if I'm being mindful to ever actually be mindful. I've tried meditation apps, but it makes me yawn whenever I try to do the breathing stuff. And then I start to think I'm not breathing correctly and start gasping for air.
Grade: C
9) Watching TV
Many people feel a bit guilty about spending time in front of the television, but the so-called Golden Age of Television has made things a bit less fraught. The pandemic has also normalized 18-hour binges or at least made it normal to admit that you go on 18-hour binges.
"People reported that watching TV was more relaxing than playing sport or going to clubs. Which is understandable," she wrote. "But they also found it more relaxing than eating meals or even idling. It made them feel drowsy and passive but also moderately cheerful. What more could you want after a hard day's work! People said they liked spending time watching telly because they didn't feel obliged to do it. And they said the reason they found it enjoyable was that there was virtually nothing at stake. All this sounds like a perfect description of rest."
I like watching television, but never remember that it's an option. I'm not interested in following a long series (the last complete program I watched through was The Wire), but I can spend hours "watching" a baseball game. Which basically means napping.
Grade: B
8) Daydreaming
This is hard to define but basically means staring off into the distance while you think about something vague. An eighth-place showing is pretty solid for an activity that isn't really anything. Scientists measured this by making people stare at a crosshair on a screen to distract them. The longer they looked, the more they drifted into random thoughts.
"Instead of 'daydreaming,' scientists tend to use the term 'mind-wandering.' Wandering (and indeed, wondering) is the brain's natural state, not rest," the Rest Test states. "Off it goes in search of things, endlessly inquisitive, another thought occurring, another interesting idea to be pursued. Does this sound tiring? Only if you endlessly chase after it, following and trying to impose order. But not if you let it go – like a toddler or a puppy racing around the garden while you relax in a deckchair."
This is more of an ambition than a task. I've only just learned that when I'm coasting toward a manic state, wanting to shut my brain down is a significant warning sign. The desire to turn my brain off doesn't really work. If it did, this grade would be higher.
Grade: C
7) Nice hot bath
I used to think adult men did not take baths. But then a bandmate, whose name shall not be disclosed, kept talking about how he never showers and only lazes around in his bathtub. Turns out he was on to something, considering it ranked so high in the Rest Test.
"As Sylvia Plath wrote in The Bell Jar, 'there must be quite a few things a bath can't cure, but I don't know many of them,'" she writes. "I doubt the great American poet had read up on the scientific and psychological evidence, but, as I say, the evidence backs up her contention."
There's lots of science to back up the resting qualities of a bath. You can read all about it the next time you take a bath.
Grade: A
6) A walk
Resting doesn't (necessarily) mean being lazy. The couch is excellent, but sitting around on the couch didn't make the Top 10. But the best thing about walking is you don't really need anything to do it, as she points out, you just need some time. Again, Hammond turns to a writer to elaborate. This time it's Henry David Thoreau.
"I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits unless I spend four hours a day at least —and it is commonly more than that —sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields, absolutely free from all worldly engagements," he wrote, somewhat pretentiously.
I never used to like walking, preferring to run. I used to run a few half marathons a year, but when my second kid was born, the idea of taking hours to run around a park didn't make a lot of sense anymore. So now I walk the dog. She likes it more than I do, but it's still pretty OK.
Grade: B
We'll break down the Top 5 ways to relax later this week.