Leisure is not lost time

As countries grew richer over the mid-1900s, average working hours decreased and leisure increased. Then, sometime around 1985, the trend reversed: Leisure hours started falling, affecting the most well-off people within wealthy countries—the very people who made up what was once called the "leisure class." "Pure leisure," which social scientists define as "leisure time that is not 'contaminated' by other non-leisure activities," has fallen across the board, affecting all income and education levels.

Time off fuels human creativity and innovation. [Philosopher Bertrand] Russell argued that it "contributed nearly the whole of what we call civilization. It cultivated the arts and discovered the sciences; it wrote the books, invented the philosophies, and refined social relations."

— Stop Treating Leisure as a Productivity Hack, Krzysztof Pelc, The Atlantic

As a task-oriented person who often questions whether I'm using time productively, this piece resonates strongly with me. It's not just about rest (although important), it's also about the need to occasionally cease the perpetual programming to work on actualizing who you are. Most of my meaningful creative contributions have required the uncontaminated spaciousness needed for creative thought, but as that time becomes harder to find, so does the desire to "optimize" it.