Downtime is a necessary part of life. Science shows it helps us be healthier, more focused, more productive and more creative. Yet somehow we often lose sight of this.
“Downtime is important for our health and our bodies, but also for our minds,” says Elissa Epel, a professor in the department of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine.
Epel and others acknowledge that many of us feel like we’re wasting time when we’re not getting things done, but research points to the costs of always being “on” and the importance of giving our brains a break. Our brains aren’t built to handle constant activity.
Even the briefest moments of inactivity, or breaks, are important, says Robert Poynton, author of Do Pause: You Are Not a To-Do List.
Short pauses—whether it’s taking a few breaths before entering a room or walking through the woods for ten minutes—can provide much-needed self-reflection.
“I think we feel like we have to get on with things,” said Poynton, who is an associate fellow at the University of Oxford in England. But “if we always have to get on with things, we haven’t taken the time to decide whether what we are doing is the most interesting, important, fruitful, delightful, enjoyable, or healthy thing.”
Downtime is different from boredom, which indicates that whatever you’re doing doesn’t excite you, as The Post reported in a Brain Matters column last year about what boredom might be telling you.
Well-established research has shown that low-level, everyday stress can cause such intense wear and tear on our body’s physiological systems that we see accelerated aging in our cells, says Epel, who co-authored the book “The Telomere Effect.Epel added: “Mindfulness-based interventions can slow biological aging by interrupting chronic stress, freeing us to deal with difficult situations without the wear and tear – and giving our bodies a break.”
Research has shown that rest, even short periods of time, has many benefits for brain health.
A small study published in the journal Cognition found that those who took short breaks were better able to focus on a task than those who didn’t. Sustained stimulation, the study authors suggested, can cause our brains to become accustomed to an activity, eventually making us dismiss it as unimportant.
A 2022 meta-analysis published in the journal PLOS One looked at how ‘micro-breaks’ can influence well-being. The study found that breaks of just 10 minutes can increase strength and reduce fatigue.
Rest periods can be especially helpful on long work days. In 2021, with many Americans working remotely all the time, Microsoft conducted a study that tracked two groups of people: the first group had two Zoom meetings in a row, and the other group took 10-minute meditation breaks between meetings. Microsoft monitored the brain activity of 14 study participants using an electroencephalogram (EEG).
In the first group, “what you see is a brain that’s full of cortisol and adrenaline,” says Celeste Headlee, a journalist and author of “Do Nothing: How to Break Away From Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving.” “It’s tired, it’s stressed, it’s probably more irritable, and it’s probably less compassionate.” The other group? “You can see in bright colors what a difference (the breaks) make,” she says. “That’s a brain that’s relaxed.”
There’s a big difference between relaxation and boredom: Boredom is a necessary activity that re-energizes us, while boredom is an unpleasant state that makes us want to do something else, says Andreas Elpidorou, a professor of philosophy at the University of Louisville who studies boredom.
“Boredom is what we experience when our task or situation does not cognitively engage us in the right way – it does not interest us enough, stimulate us, capture our attention or provide us with meaning,” he says.
It’s tempting to reach for our phones when we’re bored because they’re an easy way to avoid this uncomfortable feeling.
While there’s nothing wrong with it per se (we all do it), it’s not a good solution for boredom because it’s a passive activity, says James Danckert, a professor of cognitive neuroscience at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. and co-author of “Out of My Skull: The Psychology of Boredom.” Danckert added: “What boredom really wants you to do is deliberately do something meaningful.”
New research has begun showing the negative effects our cell phones can have on our health. Smartphone addiction (which, according to Danckert, affects 4 to 8 percent of people) is becoming increasingly common worldwide. It has been linked to physical health problems, such as eye strain and degeneration of the cervical discs, as well as anxiety and depression. Recent research also shows that it can affect the structure of our brains: two studies show that smartphone addiction is correlated with lower white matter integrity and lower gray matter volume in the brain.
But not being able to take a break is not a new problem.
In the popular 1994 mindfulness book, “Wherever You Go, There You Are,” Jon Kabat-Zinn argued that we fill all of our waking hours with busyness, doing, and self-distraction. “Life these days rarely gives us time to be unless we deliberately seize the opportunity,” he wrote.
In Henry David Thoreau’s 1854 classic “Walden” — based on the two-plus years he spent living in a cabin near Walden Pond in Massachusetts — he wrote, “It is not enough to be busy. Neither are the ants. The question is, ‘What are we busy about?’”
Most Americans view downtime as an indulgence or a treat—a treat you only deserve after you’ve completed all your productive tasks, says Amber Childs, a psychologist and associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine. But research suggests the opposite: Downtime is a basic human need.
“There’s no place where it’s built in to say that this is a normative, expected, valued part of what it means to be alive, what it means to be healthy, what it means to be whole, and what it means to thrive,” she says.
Fitting Downtime Into Your Life
Give your mind and body a reset with these three tips.
Focus on nothing. Downtime should leave you feeling rested, regenerated and recharged, says Childs. It can be as simple as relaxing by a fire or sitting outside and letting your mind wander.
Work your way up. Sitting still for 30 minutes a day is fine, but not feasible for everyone. Start small: The next time you’re waiting for a takeout order or a ride home, do nothing. Instead, you simply exist.
When in doubt, lie down. Epel’s research has looked at the benefits of deep rest, a restorative state that can improve our physical and psychological well-being. You can achieve deep rest through yoga and mindfulness meditation, but Epel said the ultimate method is simply lying on the ground.
