Last week, I attended my industry’s largest conference, held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Because I grew up in the area, I also brought along my family. We visited friends and grandparents and did some sightseeing, too.
In theory, the combination of work and leisure makes for an efficient combination. In practice, it can be hard to turn work off. While walking my child through a giant fiberglass heart at the Franklin Institute, I thought about the workshops I should probably be attending to brush up on my statistics. While drinking boba tea with family, I wondered if I should race over to the convention center and sit in on one more symposium.
Americans seem to find it particularly difficult to switch off. By one estimate, 58% report working when they’re on vacation.
A new study sheds light on the challenge of truly enjoying time off. Led by California State University psychologist Hyunjin Koo, the authors of the study call it Leisure Guilt.
Koo’s survey asks respondents to indicate their agreement with items like “I feel like a bad person when I take time off instead of work” and “I feel like I’m doing something wrong when I relax instead of work.” Reading through the scale, I’m reminded of all the times I’ve spent squinting at my inbox from a cell phone on the beach, or agreeing to a call in the middle of a vacation since it will “only take 20 minutes.”
But leisure guilt takes a real toll. Across four studies, the authors showed that leisure guilt is linked to elevated stress, heightened anxiety, and overall lower levels of well-being.
In perhaps the most interesting finding in the study, participants were far more likely to feel leisure guilt when they were alone than when they were with other people. I’ve written before about the challenges of high-quality solitude, and the many ways in which we stigmatize time alone.
To me, this is a key piece of the broader puzzle of social burnout. We have a hard time feeling comfortable when we’re alone. If you’re sitting on the couch, it’s easy to pull out your phone to answer a few emails, or open up your laptop to review Monday’s to do list.
Leisure guilt disrupts the balance of our lives in two ways. First, we spend less time on leisure overall. Perhaps more importantly, leisure guilt makes our leisure time less restorative. People high in leisure guilt report lower enjoyment of their leisure time and less happiness. Some of the data suggest that leisure even makes the most guilt-prone participants feel worse than when they’re working. As the authors put it, for the guilt prone, leisure time is “tinged with negativity, indicating an internal conflict surrounding spending time in a non-productive manner.”
Guilty leisure is barely leisure at all.
The researchers don’t look at interventions for overcoming leisure guilt, but a few promising avenues are worth consideration:
1. Reframe Leisure as Selfless Instead of Selfish. Past research has shown that we have a hard time advocating for ourselves when it feels selfish. One solution is to focus on the benefits of our self-advocacy for other people in our lives. It helps to remind ourselves that when we ask for a raise, for example, our families benefit. The same logic applies to leisure. Guilt-tinged leisure is bad for everyone. You’re less fun to be around. You do less interesting things. And you head back to work more depleted, and less able to help your coworkers and clients. So next time you take some time off, remember that leisure is a necessary part of a sustainable life, and nothing to feel guilty about.
2. Turn Guilt into Pride. Humans aren’t very good at suppressing their emotions. Tell yourself to stop being anxious before giving a big speech, and you’re only likely to make things worse. We’re much better at what research calls “reappraisal” – changing one emotion into another. When giving a big speech, it helps to reappraise anxiety as excitement. The same approach can work for leisure. If you find yourself feeling guilty, reframe it as pride. Remind yourself of the importance of a balanced life, and high-quality leisure as something to be proud of.
3. Take Leisure More Seriously. Research on solitude suggests that it’s more restorative when we’re more intentional about it. That means considering what we really want to do during our time alone, and making it happen. It can be as simple as putting on a movie we’ve been meaning to watch, or taking a drive through the countryside. Or, it can mean thinking big and, in the words of author DJ DiDonna, taking some Big Time Off.
I’m writing this post on a Saturday morning in a hip indie coffee shop in suburban Pennsylvania (OK, fine, it’s a Panera). I’ll admit that I woke up this morning with a tinge of leisure guilt, and set off to work with the hopes that a little productivity would help the guilt melt away. The irony is not lost on me. And so, I’m planning to spend the rest of the day focused on recommendations 2 and 3. Step 1: Go to the pool. Step 2: Jump in proudly.
This notion of "leisure guilt" is very recognizable. I see this among academics as well, just as you do. It is ironic that we academics often have more freedom to determine their own schedule than most, but at the same time we don't feel the sense of freedom that should come with that. (Someone once told me that being an academic is the perfect job, you work 24 hours a day but you get to choose which 24.) Part of the answer may lie in finding ways to get everything out of your mind in some kind of system, whether it's Getting Things Done by David Allen or something else. I still don't have anywhere near enough time to do everything I'd like to, but getting everything out of my mind makes it much easier to actually enjoy leisure without the guilt.