00:00:00- Joseph Pieper asserted that leisure
00:00:02is the basis of culture.
00:00:04Is it?
00:00:05I think that work is the basis of our culture.
00:00:07And that's a big problem.
00:00:09Because what we elect to do when we're not getting paid,
00:00:12that's really who we are as people.
00:00:14And if really we're doing two things,
00:00:16working and then trying to gasp for air
00:00:20so that we can come back and work some more,
00:00:22that's a big problem.
00:00:24We need to have time that's not working,
00:00:26that's equally satisfying, that's equally deep,
00:00:29that's equally meaningful.
00:00:31That's the kind of balance that we're actually looking at.
00:00:33And to do that, that means that we need to be
00:00:36as excellent as our leisure as we are actually at our work.
00:00:40Leisure is not just not work.
00:00:43Leisure is a different skill.
00:00:45Hey friends, welcome to Office Hours.
00:00:54I'm Arthur Brooks.
00:00:56I'm a behavioral scientist dedicated to lifting people up
00:00:58and bringing them together in bonds of happiness and love
00:01:00using science and ideas.
00:01:02And that's what this show is all about.
00:01:04Office Hours, like my real Office Hours at my university,
00:01:07are all about how we can all become happiness teachers,
00:01:11teachers of wellbeing, such that we can live better
00:01:13and we can bring that love and happiness to other people.
00:01:16Thank you for joining me.
00:01:17Thank you for joining me every week
00:01:18and recommending this show to your friends.
00:01:20As always, please do like and subscribe
00:01:22any place where you're watching this,
00:01:24where you're listening to this,
00:01:25and make sure that you feedback.
00:01:26Let me know what's on your mind.
00:01:27The email address is officehours@arthurbrooks.com,
00:01:32or just write anything you want in the comments.
00:01:34We look at the comments too,
00:01:35wherever you're watching this episode.
00:01:37I want to talk this week about something
00:01:40that might seem like you don't need to get better at it,
00:01:43and that's leisure.
00:01:46But in point of fact, you probably do need to get better at it.
00:01:48If you're watching this show,
00:01:49it probably means that you're a striver.
00:01:51You're an ambitious person.
00:01:52You push a lot.
00:01:55So do I.
00:01:56I saw this really interesting story not that long ago
00:01:59of a hedge fund manager,
00:02:00guy who, you know, master the universe financially,
00:02:03who runs all of these billions of dollars.
00:02:07And he had been working for 10, 15 years
00:02:11to start his hedge fund.
00:02:12Had been working 100 hours a week during this entire time,
00:02:15filled with absolute ambition,
00:02:17never stopping, grinding, grinding, grinding,
00:02:20here in New York, where I'm actually recording the show
00:02:23here today at Spotify headquarters.
00:02:25He had it all, it seemed.
00:02:27He was wealthy.
00:02:29He was pretty famous, as a matter of fact.
00:02:32But then he had a couple of setbacks in his fund.
00:02:34Then he decided it was time to cut his losses
00:02:36and close his fund.
00:02:37Now he was already rich, to be sure,
00:02:38but there was something about the setbacks
00:02:41that ruined his sense of accomplishment.
00:02:44And I've talked about this in past episodes.
00:02:46Progress is everything.
00:02:48Regress is torture, especially for strivers.
00:02:51Anyway, he closed his fund,
00:02:52but that's not the point that I'm trying to make here.
00:02:54He was asked by a journalist, so what are you gonna do?
00:02:57What are you gonna do?
00:02:58And the answer that the journalist was kind of expecting
00:03:00was, well, I'm gonna open another hedge fund,
00:03:03get a fresh start.
00:03:04That's not what he said.
00:03:05He said, I'm just so tired.
00:03:08I'm gonna go to a beach someplace and do nothing.
00:03:11And that was kind of his plan.
00:03:14His near-term and maybe even medium-term,
00:03:17who knows, long-term plan was to do nothing
00:03:21because the idea of doing nothing was the only thing
00:03:23that seemed like it might refresh his soul
00:03:26after so much time of grinding and striving
00:03:29and never resting, neglecting his family,
00:03:32neglecting his relationships.
00:03:34But it turns out, of course, that it didn't last very long.
00:03:37There's something about that leisure as chilling
00:03:41that didn't actually help him out very much,
00:03:43didn't give him what he was actually looking for.
00:03:46Now, it's funny because I can, in a weird way,
00:03:49not in the billionaire hedge fund way,
00:03:51I can kind of relate to this.
00:03:52I've always actually had kind of a hard time
00:03:55getting much refreshment from my own leisure,
00:03:57as a matter of fact.
00:03:58Early on in my career,
00:04:00I actually wasn't doing what I'm doing now.
00:04:02I was a professional classical musician.
00:04:03I was a French horn player all the way through my 20s.
00:04:06I didn't actually go to college until my late 20s
00:04:08and that by correspondence.
00:04:10I was traveling around doing my thing.
00:04:12And during a bunch of it,
00:04:13I was playing in the Barcelona City Orchestra
00:04:16in the French horn section.
00:04:17And I was super, super serious then,
00:04:20as serious then about playing the French horn
00:04:22as I am about love and happiness right now.
00:04:24And I was a grinder, man.
00:04:26I mean, I didn't take a day off.
00:04:27I didn't take a day off as a French horn player
00:04:29for 22 years, not one day off.
00:04:33I mean, no joke.
00:04:34And when I first got married to Mrs. B, my wife, Esther,
00:04:38she's from Barcelona.
00:04:39They're pretty good at leisure.
00:04:42And she was shocked because we would go on vacation together
00:04:45when we were newly married up to the Pyrenees.
00:04:47And we would go camping up to the Pyrenees, for example.
00:04:50We didn't have enough money to stay at a hotel.
00:04:52So we'd stay at this camp place called El Temple del Sol,
00:04:56which in Catalan means the Temple of the Sun.
00:04:58And it was beautiful and all that,
00:05:00but I'd have to start each day by taking out my French horn.
00:05:03And on the mountain side, I would practice
00:05:05for about two hours, just to keep my chops in shape
00:05:07and play my scales and arpeggios and a few etudes
00:05:11and a couple of things that I was working on at the time.
00:05:13And my wife was just, she was just completely confused
00:05:16by why I would want to ruin my vacation
00:05:19by taking out my French horn and remembering my work.
00:05:22And the truth of the matter was, I was just bad at leisure,
00:05:26is the bottom line.
00:05:27And maybe a lot of you are too,
00:05:28kind of like that hedge fund manager.
00:05:30It's an improper understanding of it.
00:05:32So leisure is just not fun.
00:05:34It feels like it's a break from work.
00:05:36It feels like not work.
00:05:37But then the work is grinding you down,
00:05:40but then the not work doesn't feel like it's fun either.
00:05:42And maybe you've been accused by somebody
00:05:44that you love a lot of not being able to relax,
00:05:47not being able to chill out.
00:05:49What do you do about that?
00:05:51Well, I'm gonna tell you today because today's episode
00:05:53is about how to be better at leisure,
00:05:57how you can be as excellent at leisure
00:05:59as you are at your work.
00:06:02Now, if you're like my wife, you'd be like,
00:06:03"Why do I need to watch this?"
00:06:05But if you're like me, you need three protocols
00:06:09for perfect leisure and you're gonna get them today.
00:06:13That's today's episode.
00:06:14Now, let me start at the very beginning
00:06:16when we're talking about leisure.
00:06:18It really starts with this one macronutrient of happiness.
00:06:22If you're watching my show, you know that happiness
00:06:24really has three macronutrients to it.
00:06:26Kind of like food has the macronutrients
00:06:28of protein, carbohydrates, and fat,
00:06:30happiness is made up of enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning.
00:06:33I write a lot and talk an awful lot
00:06:35about these macronutrients.
00:06:37And if you're looking behind me, you see that my new book,
00:06:40"The Meaning of Your Life,"
00:06:41that's about that third macronutrient meaning,
00:06:43which is the hardest of all.
00:06:45But some people struggle with the first one, enjoyment.
00:06:47And if you wanna get better at leisure,
00:06:49you need to get better at enjoyment.
00:06:50And that means you, to begin with,
00:06:52you need to understand what enjoyment actually is.
00:06:54So let's talk about that a little bit.
00:06:56And by the way, those of you who've taken
00:06:57the happiness scale on my website,
00:06:59you go to arthabricks.com and you take the happiness scale.
00:07:02A lot of you have, thousands of you have.
00:07:04You'll know where you stand in these macronutrients,
00:07:07where you need work and enjoyment or satisfaction and meaning.
00:07:09And if you're scoring below average on enjoyment,
00:07:11that probably means that you need to get better at leisure.
00:07:15And this episode is for you, okay?
00:07:17And for me.
00:07:19So let's talk about enjoyment a little bit
00:07:21and how to get better at it.
00:07:22And then we're gonna get back to the leisure here in a second.
00:07:23Enjoyment isn't pleasure.
00:07:27That's the first thing to understand.
00:07:28A lot of people get that wrong.
00:07:29So the hedge fund dude,
00:07:31he thought that enjoyment was just gonna be pleasure.
00:07:34It's like sipping a Mai Tai on a sunny beach someplace,
00:07:36doing absolutely nothing,
00:07:38but that was gonna give him the refreshment
00:07:39that he actually sought.
00:07:40And the reason it wasn't actually nutritious for his soul
00:07:45was because he was making the classic error
00:07:47of thinking that pleasure is the same thing as enjoyment.
00:07:50And it isn't.
00:07:51On the contrary,
00:07:52if your life strategy is getting as much pleasure as possible
00:07:55you're not gonna wind up in happiness.
00:07:57You're gonna wind up in rehab.
00:07:59There's a reason for that.
00:08:00And again, go back to the episode.
00:08:02I'll make sure that we link it right below here
00:08:04to go back to the episode on what is happiness.
00:08:06It dropped a couple of months ago
00:08:08and it's gonna be really useful for you on this.
00:08:10But suffice it to say that it requires an understanding
00:08:14of how the brain works
00:08:15to distinguish between enjoyment and pleasure.
00:08:18Pleasure is a limbic phenomenon.
00:08:20It engages the console of tissue in your brain
00:08:23that was evolved between two and 40 million years ago.
00:08:26And what it does is it basically gives you an emotional sense
00:08:30that there is something around you that's an opportunity
00:08:34and you should approach it.
00:08:36Positive emotions, including joy and interest and surprise,
00:08:40they come because you've sensed something
00:08:42is actually gonna give you a whole lot of reward
00:08:45like mates or calories or something.
00:08:47And that's really where pleasure comes in.
00:08:49Pleasure is a largely animal phenomenon in its way.
00:08:52I'm not casting aspersions.
00:08:53I'm not against pleasure,
00:08:54but we have to understand it biologically
00:08:56because psychology is biology in so many ways,
00:08:58including this.
00:08:59What we need to do to make it part of happiness
00:09:01is not to get rid of pleasure,
00:09:02it's to complete it by moving the experience of the pleasure
00:09:06from your limbic system into your prefrontal cortex.
00:09:10And that means adding two things.
00:09:12Pleasure needs to be accompanied by people and memory.
00:09:17Now, what does that mean?
00:09:17That means it needs to be social
00:09:19and you need to be conscious
00:09:21of actually what you're doing to get the pleasure.
00:09:23So it's never automatic.
00:09:26And there's all kinds of things
00:09:27that we do automatically for pleasure.
00:09:28For example, there are all sorts of habits.
00:09:29You pull out a cigarette, for example.
00:09:31You have another drink without really thinking about it.
00:09:34You mindlessly scroll social media.
00:09:36These are all automatic behaviors
00:09:39that you do in search of limbic pleasure.
00:09:42But what you need to do is actually make these things social
00:09:45and make these things conscious,
00:09:47thus actually moving the experience
00:09:48into your prefrontal cortex,
00:09:50the executive center of your brain,
00:09:51the console of tissue,
00:09:53the 30% of your brain by weight right behind your forehead.
00:09:56That's what you need to engage
00:09:57for it to actually become part of your happiness.
00:09:59And that's what enjoyment actually means.
00:10:03You need enjoyment, which is conscious,
00:10:06which is memorable, which is social.
00:10:08And also, by the way, it has pleasure involved in it.
00:10:10And in this way, you can manage your pleasures
00:10:12and your pleasures don't manage you.
00:10:13And you get the distinction, right?
00:10:15If you're being managed by your pleasures, look out.
00:10:17If you're managing your pleasures, fantastic, good for you.
00:10:21And the way that you do that
00:10:22is by turning them into enjoyment.
00:10:24Okay, that's a reminder.
00:10:26I mean, that's just a reference
00:10:27back to what we've done in a past episode.
00:10:29If you want more on that basic science,
00:10:31then go back to that episode and watch that episode.
00:10:33Okay, now back to how enjoyment actually works.
00:10:36Enjoyment is really interesting
00:10:37because you're managing your pleasures in such a way
00:10:39that you're getting something really lovely,
00:10:41something delightful,
00:10:42something that really, really feels good,
00:10:45but you're not getting so much of it that it's addicting you,
00:10:48that it's subjugating you.
00:10:50Basically, what it means is that
00:10:51you're refusing to be managed by your pleasures, that's great,
00:10:54but you're also not being subjugated
00:10:56by a complete lack of these pleasures.
00:10:58It's this balance.
00:10:59Enjoyment involves this balance
00:11:01between too little and too much.
00:11:05And that's because your adult, your executive center,
00:11:07the C-suite of your brain is involved in saying,
00:11:10"Yeah, give me more, but not too much."
00:11:12That getting that balance right
00:11:13is the essence of what it means to be a person
00:11:15who's fully alive, to actually be in balance.
00:11:18This is a lot of how we understand leisure
00:11:21with respect to work.
00:11:22Now, everybody watching me, not everybody,
00:11:25a lot of you watching me, you love your work.
00:11:27You love actually what it does.
00:11:29You love what you accomplish.
00:11:31You love how you feel when you're achieving these things
00:11:33and even the activities, not all the time,
00:11:36because not all of your activities
00:11:37are gonna be pleasant all the time,
00:11:38but a lot of the time are really, really pleasant.
00:11:39They make you feel, your work makes you feel alive,
00:11:42but you know what happens when you do too much of it.
00:11:44You get tired, you get ground down, you become ornery,
00:11:47and something actually becomes missing from your life.
00:11:50So this is the enjoyment factor that comes in from balancing.
00:11:54Now, you know where I'm going with this,
00:11:56work-life balance or work-leisure trade-off
00:12:00is kinda how we're talking about that.
00:12:02That's fair, but I don't wanna talk about it that way.
00:12:05The reason is because I don't actually think
00:12:06there is a balance between work and life
00:12:09because work is part of your life,
00:12:11but leisure has to be part of your life too.
00:12:14Here's what we need to do to get as much enjoyment
00:12:16as possible, as well as satisfaction and meaning
00:12:19from our work and all the things that we do
00:12:21that are productive.
00:12:22We need to have time that's not working,
00:12:24that's equally satisfying, that's equally deep,
00:12:27that's equally meaningful.
00:12:30That's the kind of balance that we're actually looking at.
00:12:32And to do that, that means that we need to be as excellent
00:12:35as our leisure, as we are actually at our work.
00:12:39Leisure is not just not work.
00:12:42Leisure is a different skill.
00:12:45Now, that's an important thing to understand here
00:12:48because that's not how people typically talk about it.
00:12:51Even the great, the philosopher, St. Thomas Aquinas
00:12:55referred to Aristotle as the philosopher.
00:12:57I mean, that's how important Aristotle was.
00:12:59Aristotle said, "We toil that we may rest
00:13:02"and war that we may be at peace."
00:13:04That's this understanding that leisure is not working,
00:13:06but I don't want you to think about it that way.
00:13:08I want you to think about your life as a portfolio
00:13:11of wonderful things that include your generative
00:13:14financial activities and the things that are equally rewarding
00:13:17for making you an interesting, complex, satisfied person
00:13:22that are not the work part, and that's the leisure part.
00:13:26That's why I'm gonna give you protocols
00:13:28on how to be as excellent at your leisure
00:13:30as you actually are at your work.
00:13:32And the way to do this is with a pretty contemporary
00:13:35philosopher, or is to start with the ideas
00:13:38of a contemporary philosopher who really, really loved
00:13:40Aristotle, but tried to turn those ideas into something
00:13:44that were a little bit more, I don't know,
00:13:46maybe acutely aware of the experience
00:13:49that we're trying to have.
00:13:50And that was the German philosopher,
00:13:52the German 20th century philosopher, Joseph Pieper.
00:13:56Now Pieper, who lived between 1904 and 1997,
00:14:00was most famous for a book that he wrote
00:14:02called "The Four Cardinal Virtues."
00:14:04And there will be future episodes
00:14:07on these four cardinal virtues.
00:14:09'Cause believe it or not, it sounds so boring, right?
00:14:11I mean, the four cardinal virtues, prudence, justice,
00:14:13temperance, fortitude, you know, wake me up when we're done.
00:14:16No, no, no, it's super interesting.
00:14:18It's unbelievably exciting when we talk about
00:14:21how he defines each one of these things
00:14:23and how they can change your life
00:14:24and how they can change your work
00:14:26and how they can make you into a more excellent person.
00:14:28That's his most famous book.
00:14:29I wanna talk about a long essay, sort of a book,
00:14:33essay that he wrote that's really in line
00:14:35with what we're talking about here,
00:14:36which is called "Leisure, the Basis of Culture."
00:14:39His belief was that, and he was German, okay?
00:14:43So like Americans, work, work, work, right?
00:14:46But he didn't write a book called "Work, the Basis of Culture."
00:14:48That would be the most obvious book ever.
00:14:50He said not work is the basis of culture if you do it right.
00:14:55If your culture does it right,
00:14:57then your culture is gonna get healthier
00:14:58and happier and stronger
00:15:00because of what we do when we're not at work.
00:15:03But that's not chilling on the beach.
00:15:04That's not, you know, scrolling away your time
00:15:07on social media.
00:15:09That's not wasting your time at all.
00:15:11That's being great at this stuff.
00:15:13Fortunately, his essay, "Leisure, the Basis of Culture,"
00:15:17gives you the secrets on how to do it.
00:15:19And that's what we're talking about here.
00:15:20Okay, now, the first big idea in Pieper's
00:15:23"Leisure, the Basis of Culture" is something called acedia.
00:15:26And this is an ancient, you know, Greek word, acedia,
00:15:29that basically means spiritual and mental sloth.
00:15:33Okay, now, when I talk about sloth,
00:15:35or also pronounced by philosopher Sloth,
00:15:38this is one of the seven deadly sins.
00:15:41You know, and the seven deadly sins, of course,
00:15:44is really important and popular in our thinking
00:15:48because of the work of Dante and the Divine Comedy.
00:15:50And Dante is, you know, in this great book,
00:15:54in this great poem, he's going through hell,
00:15:57purgatory, and heaven with Virgil, the philosopher.
00:16:00And they're looking at people who have committed
00:16:03these horrible sins.
00:16:04And sloth is kind of in the middle.
00:16:07The worst is pride, and there's envy,
00:16:10and then there's anger.
00:16:11And it's sort of in the middle is sloth.
00:16:13It's the, you know, sort of laziness is the way.
00:16:16And we think of laziness as not wanting to work.
00:16:20Hanging out is the couch, is what it comes down to.
00:16:22It's like, ah, I should work, yeah, but you know,
00:16:24there's, I'm gonna binge some show on Netflix.
00:16:27And I have that pint of Häagen-Dazs in the freezer
00:16:29and that new fuzzy blanket, so let's go.
00:16:32No, that's not how Pieper thinks about sloth.
00:16:36He thinks about it fundamentally as a weakness
00:16:39that's spiritual and mental, not just physical.
00:16:42It's not just sitting around on the couch.
00:16:44It's not just, you know, hey, it's leg day at the gym,
00:16:46so I think I'm actually gonna hang out
00:16:48and not go to the gym instead.
00:16:50That's the least of it.
00:16:51Why, because all of the physical kind of laziness
00:16:54that we have, it clearly and obviously,
00:16:56it actually comes from a more of a mental
00:16:58or a psychological state.
00:16:59And you might even join me in saying
00:17:01it's kind of a spiritual state.
00:17:02And so that's what acedia really is,
00:17:04is the spiritual and mental sloth.
00:17:06And he says that the worst kind of spiritual and mental sloth
00:17:09starts with the wrong understanding of leisure.
00:17:12And these are acediac activities.
00:17:14Here are the ones that he would really talk about today
00:17:16that are characterized by mental and spiritual sloth.
00:17:19This is the kind of leisure to avoid, according to Pieper,
00:17:23and according to, well, us too,
00:17:25if you wanna live the best life.
00:17:26Number one, scrolling social media.
00:17:28Now, you should scroll.
00:17:30I'm gonna talk about that a little bit later
00:17:31and on many other episodes.
00:17:33I'm not against scrolling on social media, believe it or not.
00:17:35I'm not an activist about this at all.
00:17:38On the contrary, social media can be really good for you
00:17:40if you use it in particular ways.
00:17:41So stay tuned on how social media can make your life better.
00:17:44But mindlessly scrolling social media,
00:17:46especially right before you go to bed.
00:17:48And again, you wanna know how this affects your sleep?
00:17:50Go back to the "Nighttime Protocols,"
00:17:52the nine "Nighttime Protocols" episode.
00:17:54That one will talk to you about
00:17:55actually what happens to your brain
00:17:56by stimulating your stress hormones
00:17:58and inhibiting your pineal gland
00:18:00and all kinds of bad stuff that happens to you.
00:18:02But just in general, it's this kind of sloth.
00:18:05What it does is it puts your brain on hold.
00:18:07Now, interesting neuroscience suggests
00:18:09that actually what it does
00:18:11is it distracts you while stressing you out.
00:18:13Bad combination.
00:18:15But the whole point is that peeper,
00:18:16even before the advent of modern neuroscience,
00:18:19would say that it's just slothful.
00:18:22It was just kind of lazy,
00:18:23chuckling at memes while you do that.
00:18:26It's just not a productive use of your leisure.
00:18:31Getting drunk is another way of doing this,
00:18:33where you're sort of inebriating yourself.
00:18:35You're anesthetizing your brain.
00:18:37You're distracting yourself.
00:18:38You're binge streaming some show.
00:18:41All of these things that are basically distraction
00:18:43from your ordinary life,
00:18:44the sort of the just chilling phenomenon.
00:18:46And again, I got nothing against actually
00:18:48taking some time off and sitting on the beach either.
00:18:50I'm not trying to turn your leisure
00:18:51actually into another job.
00:18:54Stay tuned.
00:18:56I'm gonna talk about that in this episode here.
00:18:57But it's really important to think,
00:18:59if you're trying to put your brain on hold,
00:19:01no, if you're trying to put your soul on hold,
00:19:04if you're trying to do absolutely nothing generative,
00:19:07nothing deep, nothing spiritual,
00:19:09it's acedia as far as he's concerned.
00:19:12And that's beneath you.
00:19:13That's sort of morally and spiritually beneath you.
00:19:16It's also going to lead to your unhappiness,
00:19:20which I'm gonna show you in a second.
00:19:21True leisure is something that has kind of two parts to it.
00:19:25It's spiritually and mentally productive.
00:19:28And it tends to be contemplative.
00:19:31It's something where you're learning and you're growing.
00:19:33It's productive in this particular way,
00:19:35but it really uses your soul, heart and mind,
00:19:38soul, heart and mind, soul, heart and mind.
00:19:40Why is it leisure?
00:19:41Because nobody's paying you for it, for example,
00:19:44and you're not behind the gun with it.
00:19:46You really are in charge of doing this
00:19:49for your own generativity, for your own growth,
00:19:53for your own change.
00:19:54Here's some examples.
00:19:55Reading something really deep and reflecting on it.
00:19:59And again, the reflecting on it is really important.
00:20:01Maybe that's what you're doing
00:20:02while you're sitting on the beach.
00:20:04That is a really generative activity.
00:20:07You've maybe heard me talk about this,
00:20:09that this is a form of contemplative meditation,
00:20:12as a matter of fact.
00:20:13This is how the Dalai Lama starts every day,
00:20:16is for two hours first thing in the morning
00:20:17before it's light outside.
00:20:19In the Brahma Muhurta, in the Creator's time,
00:20:21the Dalai Lama spends two hours
00:20:24thinking about a passage in Tibetan Buddhist scripture.
00:20:28Something really deep.
00:20:29What does this mean?
00:20:30How am I supposed to interpret that?
00:20:32How does this affect my life?
00:20:33How am I gonna teach this to other people?
00:20:35That's an incredibly deep kind of leisure.
00:20:39That's an exciting kind of leisure,
00:20:40and it requires that you learn something in a particular way.
00:20:43Maybe you're reading,
00:20:44maybe you're watching the show, for all I know,
00:20:46but you're using it in a contemplative way.
00:20:49Another way is having to have true leisure,
00:20:52according to Josef Pieper,
00:20:53is deep artistic experiences,
00:20:56where you're consuming art,
00:20:58where you're producing art,
00:21:00where you're deeply engaging the right hemisphere
00:21:03of your brain,
00:21:04which is the hemisphere that largely is in charge
00:21:07of governing meaning and mystery.
00:21:10That's really important.
00:21:12Spending time in nature is very similar to that,
00:21:14as a matter of fact,
00:21:15because beauty is beauty.
00:21:16Beauty stimulates the right part of your brain
00:21:19and leads to generative growth
00:21:21in either artistic experiences
00:21:23or nature-based experiences.
00:21:26Learning new ideas or learning new skills
00:21:28is really important,
00:21:29especially when you're not learning it
00:21:31so you can make more money.
00:21:33It's not stimulated by an extrinsic goal.
00:21:35Remember, extrinsic goals are money, power,
00:21:38admiration of other people.
00:21:40Intrinsic goals are faith, love,
00:21:44experiences that are intrinsically satisfying.
00:21:46So if you're learning something,
00:21:47because it makes you a deeper, more spiritual,
00:21:51more interesting person,
00:21:53notwithstanding what it will do
00:21:54to give you these worldly rewards,
00:21:57these are the kinds of leisure activities
00:21:59that tend to be contemplative and very productive,
00:22:02according to Josef Pieper.
00:22:04Deepening personal relationships,
00:22:06a deep, deep, deep conversation with somebody.
00:22:09And again, you can think of all the conversations
00:22:10that you have.
00:22:12This idea of deep generative activity through conversation
00:22:17has really changed the way that I interact with friends,
00:22:20the way that my wife and I actually, that we socialize.
00:22:22So Esther and I, I remember several years ago,
00:22:25some years ago now, maybe 15 years ago now,
00:22:27we realized that we didn't like most social activities.
00:22:31We didn't like them.
00:22:32We didn't like dinners with friends that much.
00:22:33We thought about it and we kind of deconstructed
00:22:36why this was the case.
00:22:37Why do they drive us crazy?
00:22:38And the answer is because they're so shallow.
00:22:41So where do your kids go to camp?
00:22:43Oh yeah, little juniors taking sailing lessons.
00:22:45Waste my time, no.
00:22:48I would prefer to be in silence.
00:22:50Are you kidding me?
00:22:51And so we made a rule, go deeper, go home.
00:22:55And so it's crazy, man.
00:22:56I mean, it's like, you come over to my house for dinner
00:22:58and you're gonna eat some good food.
00:23:01That's not the point.
00:23:02You're gonna get nailed with.
00:23:04What are you most afraid of?
00:23:06That's my wife.
00:23:07It's gonna be heavy.
00:23:08And the reason for that is because we don't want acedia.
00:23:10We don't want acedia in our conversations.
00:23:13On the contrary, we want leisure properly understood.
00:23:16We want to learn and grow with you.
00:23:18And if that's too much, okay, I get it.
00:23:20I mean, different strokes for different folks.
00:23:22But these kind of deep relationships that you can have,
00:23:25I mean, that's the life in life.
00:23:27And the reason is so unbelievably generative
00:23:30where you go home after a conversation like that
00:23:32and you say, I'm better, I'm better.
00:23:35My heart is fuller.
00:23:36The reason is because you just experienced the kind of leisure
00:23:39that you need to be experiencing all the time.
00:23:41And if you wonder why you're not getting that all the time,
00:23:45it's because you're probably not good enough at leisure.
00:23:47And the punchline of this is gonna be
00:23:49because you need to follow the three leisure protocols.
00:23:52So this is where we're going.
00:23:55Now, before I get to the specific protocols on this,
00:23:58I do want to explain a little bit more of the science
00:23:59behind a lot of how this works,
00:24:01the behavioral science research behind deep leisure,
00:24:05behind deep activities and how they affect people
00:24:07and how they affect people in generative
00:24:09and very productive ways.
00:24:11There's a lot of social science literature
00:24:13that talks about different kinds of leisure activities
00:24:15and how they affect you.
00:24:16And the bottom line for most of the literature
00:24:18is do nothing leisure,
00:24:21which actually a lot of it includes most vacation travel.
00:24:24It provides boosts in wellbeing
00:24:27that are very, very temporary.
00:24:30They're not lasting at all.
00:24:31Whereas pursuits that involve deep social engagement,
00:24:34personal reflection, a lot of nature activity,
00:24:38a lot of artistic activity,
00:24:39they tend to be way more sustaining in wellbeing.
00:24:42It's a really interesting article
00:24:43in the Journal of Leisure Research.
00:24:45Yes, there is a Journal of Leisure Research.
00:24:47This is called Routine and Project-Based Leisure.
00:24:49It's from 2012.
00:24:51So it's a little bit older now,
00:24:52but it certainly does still obtain these findings
00:24:56as far as I'm concerned.
00:24:57And there's another article put in there,
00:24:59Happiness Through Leisure,
00:25:01from a pretty interesting volume on this.
00:25:04I'll put that in the notes as well.
00:25:05It's a volume called Positive Leisure Science.
00:25:07How do leisure scientists actually do their work?
00:25:10You'll learn about that if you want to.
00:25:11Okay, so to be more specific about it, the literature,
00:25:14it kind of breaks things up into beauty,
00:25:18nature, and a few other basic areas.
00:25:21I'm not gonna go three hours into this,
00:25:24but I am gonna take you through a little bit
00:25:25of what this literature looks at.
00:25:28To begin with, beauty creates a lot of emotional resonance.
00:25:32What beauty does, and to put it in a nutshell,
00:25:35this is gonna be topics for a whole bunch of future episodes
00:25:39on the brain science of hemispheric lateralization,
00:25:42which is, of course, the two hemispheres of the brain,
00:25:44how they work differently.
00:25:45This is what a lot of my new research is looking at,
00:25:48is how the left and the right hemispheres,
00:25:49they tend to be mismatched and imbalanced in modern life.
00:25:52And they explain the explosion of depression and anxiety
00:25:55as we spend too much time in the left side of our heads
00:25:57and not enough time in the right side of our heads.
00:25:59One of the ways to open up the right hemisphere of your brain
00:26:02to find more meaning, to find more mystery,
00:26:04to find more love, to find more happiness,
00:26:07is actually to get more beauty into your life.
00:26:10And most people, they get beauty into their lives
00:26:13through their leisure activities.
00:26:14This is one of the reasons that you gotta be good at leisure,
00:26:17is because you need to find meaning and mystery
00:26:19and happiness and love and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
00:26:22Beauty creates a lot of emotional resonance.
00:26:24And there's lots of funny stuff on this, actually.
00:26:28So for example, if you're in a pretty good mood,
00:26:32you'll find that happy music will help you connect to that
00:26:36and help you understand that it's not just pleasure
00:26:39that you get from having this mood,
00:26:40but there's something behind it that you wanna learn from.
00:26:42You can learn from your positive experiences,
00:26:46your positive moods, your positive emotions.
00:26:48And one of the ways to do that is by connecting to beauty
00:26:51that has kind of a happiness to it.
00:26:53There's one piece of research that shows
00:26:55that the happiest song ever written
00:26:57is the Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations."
00:26:59That's not for me, but whatever.
00:27:03I'm an old classical musician,
00:27:05so my tastes run a little bit differently.
00:27:06But actually more interesting than that,
00:27:08that same literature shows that you can connect
00:27:11to the deep experiences and learning
00:27:13from your negative emotions,
00:27:15as opposed to trying to banish your negative emotions
00:27:17by listening to sad songs.
00:27:19You'll get more meaning if, when you're not working,
00:27:22you're listening to actually sad music
00:27:24when you're feeling sad.
00:27:24And you might say, "Well, that's counterintuitive.
00:27:26"Listening to sad music will make me feel sadder."
00:27:28Well, it's not true.
00:27:30It'll help you to put into context your sad emotions,
00:27:32which is when you've been through a nasty breakup,
00:27:34which you probably have.
00:27:35You wanna listen to sad music
00:27:36because it helps you understand your emotions,
00:27:38but you're also actually benefiting
00:27:40from leisure in those moments.
00:27:43Doing this systematically is kind of a good thing to do,
00:27:45is listening to more music
00:27:47that kind of matches your emotions.
00:27:49Art creation is even better
00:27:50when it comes to generative leisure, as it turns out.
00:27:53And there's a lot of research, especially on the elderly,
00:27:55who have a lot more leisure time.
00:27:57The big difference between are you gonna get happier
00:28:00when you retire, as opposed to you're gonna get unhappier
00:28:02when you retire, here's the difference.
00:28:04Do you know, are you good at leisure or not,
00:28:06is what it comes down to.
00:28:07I mean, I talk to people a lot about the liminal space
00:28:10between full-time work and retirement.
00:28:13And that's a really hard thing because that change,
00:28:15I'll do a future episode on retirement, I promise you,
00:28:17'cause there are retirement protocols,
00:28:20things that you should do when you retire,
00:28:22that will avoid a lot of big, natural problems,
00:28:25neurophysiological problems, as a matter of fact,
00:28:28but also help you to keep from making avoidable mistakes.
00:28:32But just in general,
00:28:33even if you've been retired for 10 years,
00:28:35you're not gonna like it if you,
00:28:37and you're gonna die sooner if you're bad at leisure.
00:28:39That's really what it comes down to.
00:28:41So one of the things that we find is that elderly people
00:28:44who struggle with their leisure and they're retired,
00:28:47but they're kind of too old to work.
00:28:50One of the ways that you can improve their lives a lot
00:28:52is by introducing the production of art into their lives.
00:28:55And so they kind of tritely call that art therapy.
00:28:58They start painting watercolors or throwing pots
00:29:01or whatever, writing poetry,
00:29:04writing haikus or something like that.
00:29:06It's much deeper than that.
00:29:08It's not just some sort of art therapy
00:29:09so the old people won't feel so depressed.
00:29:11On the contrary, it's a super important understanding
00:29:14of they're actually able to experience
00:29:16and produce productive leisure for the first time.
00:29:20And they're using their brains
00:29:21the way that their brains should be used.
00:29:23It's also therapeutic in other ways, of course.
00:29:25There's a lot of work that shows that elderly people
00:29:27when they think you can alleviate
00:29:29a lot of neurological problems by introducing beauty.
00:29:32And that's almost certainly a right hemispheric phenomenon
00:29:35in their brains.
00:29:36There's a bunch of Parkinson's stuff.
00:29:38When people who, when they hear a rhythmic piece,
00:29:42people who have a kinetic point,
00:29:43they have where they're sort of rigid from Parkinson's.
00:29:45When they hear a rhythmic piece, they can move better.
00:29:47And I remember this, my mother was really suffering
00:29:49from rigidity from a lot of Parkinsonian syndrome
00:29:53that she had later in life.
00:29:55She died at a relatively young age and it was hard
00:29:57because she had a lot of health problems.
00:29:58And there were times when she just couldn't move.
00:30:03And one of the things that she would do
00:30:05is that she had been a classical musician her whole life.
00:30:08She was a professional painter
00:30:09and she was also a good amateur violinist and pianist.
00:30:12She would actually put music on.
00:30:13She would put on Prokofiev's "Love of Three Oranges"
00:30:16and which has this march in the middle of it.
00:30:19And she would put it on the march, this Prokofiev march,
00:30:22and she would start walking.
00:30:24You would help her start walking again.
00:30:26And that's a generalizable phenomenon.
00:30:28Alzheimer's patients, when they're having trouble
00:30:30remembering common things, if you put on music
00:30:33that they actually remember from a particular time,
00:30:35they'll remember faces and names from that time as well.
00:30:39And so there's all these therapeutic things.
00:30:40That's a little bit apart from what I'm talking about here,
00:30:43which is happiness and using your leisure appropriately.
00:30:46But there's so much good that actually comes from it.
00:30:47That's my point.
00:30:49Nature, of course, and this is a big problem.
00:30:53One of the biggest problems that we have
00:30:54is that we don't know how to have good leisure.
00:30:57And one of the reasons that we don't is we're not just
00:30:59naturally in nature.
00:31:01If you want to be inspired by appropriate leisure,
00:31:04go back and just read "Walden" by Henry David Thoreau
00:31:07or any of his--
00:31:09Walden's OK.
00:31:10His great essays were published in the Atlantic in the 1860s,
00:31:14usually right after his death.
00:31:16And one of his most famous essays in the Atlantic
00:31:18was called "Walking."
00:31:20I'll put it in the show notes.
00:31:22You can go back and just click on it from the archives
00:31:24of the Atlantic.
00:31:25Here is this vast, savage, hovering mother
00:31:27of ours, nature, lying all around with such beauty
00:31:31and such affection for her children as the leopard.
00:31:34And yet we're so early weaned from her breast
00:31:36to society, that culture, which is exclusively
00:31:39an interaction of man on man.
00:31:42I mean, that was published in a magazine back in those days.
00:31:45What that is is a celebration of the right hemisphere
00:31:48of Henry David Thoreau's brain when he was out in nature.
00:31:52And he probably got paid for the essay,
00:31:54but he certainly wasn't getting paid for the walk that
00:31:58was underneath it.
00:31:59This is becoming a huge problem.
00:32:01It's a significant period of each day in nature.
00:32:03That was an experience of 90% of Americans
00:32:08at the beginning of the 19th century.
00:32:10It's less than 20% at the close of the 20th century
00:32:12for Americans today.
00:32:14And walking around outside, it was an ordinary part of life,
00:32:17and it just sort of is less.
00:32:18But it's also less part of how people see their lives, less
00:32:21how people actually are experiencing nature.
00:32:24And the result of it is that they're getting less good
00:32:26peeper variety nature.
00:32:28It's less generative.
00:32:29It's less contemplative, how people are living their lives.
00:32:32One of the best ways that you can be contemplative
00:32:34and enjoy your life is just, man, go outside.
00:32:37That's why-- it's hilarious.
00:32:40A lot of people have this-- young people today,
00:32:42my kids in their 20s, they have this expression
00:32:44when they're online too much, and they
00:32:46want to get back in touch with reality.
00:32:50They say-- they have this expression, touch grass.
00:32:53Like, what's that?
00:32:53That's literally, go outside and touch this living, growing
00:32:57thing as opposed to looking at your screen all day.
00:32:59What that basically is saying is, get away
00:33:03from this generative activity that's
00:33:05putting you in the wrong part of your brain and go outside
00:33:08and experience this generative kind of, if not leisure,
00:33:12at least get a break from you.
00:33:14There's tons of research on this.
00:33:16At some point, I should do a show on nature, per se.
00:33:21But suffice it to say that it's really clear in the research
00:33:24that the more time that you're outside experiencing nature
00:33:28as part of your leisure, this is the shortcut
00:33:31to experiencing leisure the right way.
00:33:33Even better, by the way, is think of three or four
00:33:36big contemplative and philosophical ideas
00:33:38that you want to understand.
00:33:39And then go for your hour-long walk half an hour
00:33:41before the sun comes up.
00:33:43And experiencing the sun coming up without your devices,
00:33:45thinking about these three philosophical things.
00:33:47You'll be killing like three birds with one stone.
00:33:51Your life will be better.
00:33:52OK, we find in a lot of the literature
00:33:55that when leisure is properly experienced through these ways
00:33:59that I've talked about so far, these are just two.
00:34:01Artistic expression and nature, that anxiety goes down.
00:34:06There's better mood.
00:34:07There's more working memory.
00:34:09This is just better for you as it is.
00:34:11And again, you might be saying to yourself,
00:34:13well, maybe that's just sitting on the beach.
00:34:15But remember, it has to be something
00:34:17that has content to it.
00:34:19Because that's what your brain actually needs.
00:34:22That's what your life actually needs.
00:34:25It also-- side note--
00:34:27will improve your work.
00:34:28And again, that's just not what I'm trying to do.
00:34:30Remember that it's not right that leisure is simply
00:34:33the absence of work.
00:34:34But leisure, properly understood, will improve your work.
00:34:38Iron sharpens iron, as they say in the Proverbs.
00:34:40That means that when your work is better
00:34:42and you're good at leisure, your leisure will be better.
00:34:44And your leisure is more skillful
00:34:46because what we're talking about here,
00:34:47that your work will get better as well.
00:34:48And it's really clear that when people are great at leisure,
00:34:51their work gets enormously better.
00:34:53There's a really interesting 2012 study
00:34:55called "Creativity in the Wild--
00:34:57Improving Creative Responses Through Immersion
00:35:00in Natural Settings."
00:35:01And that's in PLOS One.
00:35:02That's in an APEC science journal.
00:35:04Once again, it goes into the show notes.
00:35:06It basically talks about how you're better.
00:35:09You're better at your concentration.
00:35:10You're better at memory.
00:35:12You're better at focus.
00:35:15You work more joyfully if you're great at your leisure.
00:35:20It's also true that you'll be better
00:35:22at a lot of your spiritual goals when you get better at it
00:35:26if you're using your leisure specifically
00:35:29for these kinds of goals.
00:35:30When people are asked to experience awe
00:35:34and to pay real attention to the depth of what they're
00:35:37experiencing outside--
00:35:38a great Japanese study that shows that they have
00:35:40more self-transcendence, a greater sense of closeness
00:35:43to God, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
00:35:46OK, now that's a warm-up because we've
00:35:47got to get to really the meat of this, which is how do you
00:35:51get better at your leisure?
00:35:52The three leisure protocols.
00:35:55You know I love this stuff.
00:35:57And basically, there's three things you need to do.
00:36:00You need to structure your leisure.
00:36:02You need to not waste your leisure.
00:36:04And you need to set leisure goals.
00:36:06These are the three things that you need to do.
00:36:08And again, this might sound like I'm turning your leisure
00:36:09into work.
00:36:10I'm not.
00:36:11I'm just asking you to take your leisure with seriousness.
00:36:13And maybe some of you are watching this,
00:36:15like, I don't need this.
00:36:16If you don't need this, great, but you might
00:36:18and you didn't know it.
00:36:20And I need it.
00:36:21This is what I do because I want a better life,
00:36:23and this has really changed my life.
00:36:25And I've been working on this with my students,
00:36:27super strivers, and it's really, really helped them a lot.
00:36:31I want you to be an elite leisure athlete,
00:36:35and these are the three ways to get it done.
00:36:37Number one is structuring your leisure.
00:36:39And that means taking your leisure the same way
00:36:40that you would your workout.
00:36:42You don't go to the gym and just go to the gym and like,
00:36:44I don't know.
00:36:45I mean, maybe I'll go to the elliptical for--
00:36:47I'm not even going to turn on the timer.
00:36:49It's going to go, rah, rah, rah, rah.
00:36:50I go pick up this weight and go pick up that weight.
00:36:52And that's the way to get frustrated, not
00:36:54get into better shape.
00:36:55There are a lot of people who actually do that.
00:36:57They go to the gym thinking that being in the gym,
00:37:00they're going to get in better health.
00:37:03It's not being in the gym.
00:37:04It's actually what you do in the gym.
00:37:06The same thing as being at the beach isn't the point.
00:37:09It's what you're actually doing in your leisure at the beach
00:37:12is actually what matters.
00:37:14And that means it actually needs to be structured.
00:37:16Three things to do-- take it seriously, schedule it,
00:37:18and plan it is what it comes down to.
00:37:21That means leaving your device behind,
00:37:25making sure that you've structured it
00:37:26so that you know what you're actually going to be doing.
00:37:29You have an agenda of activities that you're
00:37:32engaged in certain days at certain times.
00:37:36You engage in different kinds of leisure.
00:37:38It's really important.
00:37:39And it's actually kind of interesting
00:37:41how people have structured this in the past.
00:37:43Many religions, for example, have a concept
00:37:45called the holy hour of your grandparents
00:37:48if they were Catholic in America.
00:37:50They used to watch this show on CBS that was hosted--
00:37:53it was actually the most popular prime time show on CBS,
00:37:57believe it or not, by a Catholic bishop
00:37:59by the name of Fulton Sheen.
00:38:01And he had this cult following practically.
00:38:03He came out with this red cape.
00:38:05And he would talk about the holy hour
00:38:07and had a structural holy hour each day.
00:38:10And he recommended that everybody, particularly
00:38:12priests, but lay people as well, do this holy hour.
00:38:15Now, the reason it was so popular-- he was great.
00:38:17But the reason was because that's what Catholics all
00:38:19watched on CBS on one particular night during the week.
00:38:23And during that holy hour, he would
00:38:24recommend prayer, scripture, reading, and meditation
00:38:26is what they would do.
00:38:27But really, really super structured.
00:38:29Nobody was getting paid for that.
00:38:30It's not like a priest gets a bonus in his check
00:38:34and you, if you do something like a holy hour,
00:38:36you don't either.
00:38:37But it's a super structured and scheduled thing
00:38:40that you would actually do.
00:38:41That, according to Pieper, is leisure.
00:38:44And that's generative leisure because you
00:38:45come out of your holy hour.
00:38:46And if you've done it, man, I do this--
00:38:48I mean, every day, my morning protocol,
00:38:50you go back to that show.
00:38:51You'll see this is something I do.
00:38:53I come out of it so generative, so much better.
00:38:58My life is just better as a result of it.
00:39:00And that's, according to Pieper, not just
00:39:03because of what I'm doing spiritually,
00:39:05not because of what I'm doing to practice my religion,
00:39:07but because I'm understanding leisure the way
00:39:09it's supposed to be understood.
00:39:11So that's what we're really talking about, a structure.
00:39:14It's like, I take a 30 to 40-minute walk after dinner
00:39:18with Esther every day that I'm home.
00:39:20That's part of my structured leisure.
00:39:22It's scheduled.
00:39:24That's what we do.
00:39:24It's planned.
00:39:25It's time that we actually take.
00:39:27We actually have even--
00:39:28because it's dark, because we eat dinner early,
00:39:31and we finish dinner at 6.30, 6.45.
00:39:34We have these little lights on our jackets.
00:39:36It's like such an old couple thing to do.
00:39:38I'm green, and she's red.
00:39:39We look like a Christmas tree between us.
00:39:41Anyway, that's neither here nor there.
00:39:43OK, that's protocol number one.
00:39:44Take it seriously like you take the gym.
00:39:47Structure it.
00:39:48Schedule it.
00:39:49Second, don't waste it.
00:39:51It's so funny, because people will
00:39:53have an hour for an hour break.
00:39:55That's serious time.
00:39:57And they'll start by frittering it away.
00:39:59You know, I'm going to look at the news a little bit,
00:40:02kind of scroll the headlines, watch a few.
00:40:05Like, let's see what's going on on social media.
00:40:08Let me check my notifications.
00:40:10Don't do that.
00:40:11That's such a waste.
00:40:11I mean, you wouldn't do that when you start your--
00:40:13maybe you do that when you start your work.
00:40:14That's a waste of time when you start your work as well.
00:40:17That's kind of like, you know, I used to have this dog.
00:40:19I love my dog, Chucho.
00:40:20He was such a good boy.
00:40:21He died after 12 happy years with my family.
00:40:25But before Chucho would get into his bed,
00:40:27he had this pillow he had near the door.
00:40:30And he would, like, walk around the pillow, you know.
00:40:33Why are you walking around the pillow?
00:40:35He'd walk around the pillow for a few minutes,
00:40:37sometimes for a weirdly long time,
00:40:39before he'd get in the bed.
00:40:41Like, don't you want to get in the bed?
00:40:42Anyway, I'm not here to psychoanalyze poor, dead Chucho.
00:40:45But we kind of do that with our leisure, with our rest as well.
00:40:50We don't really get right into it for some particular reason.
00:40:52It's a serious thing, so don't waste your time.
00:40:55If your plan is to read a book from 6 to 7 in the morning,
00:40:59which is not a book about work, you're
00:41:01reading the Summa Theologiae of Thomas Aquinas
00:41:04or the brothers Karamazov of Dostoevsky.
00:41:07And side note, you want a good book reading list,
00:41:09go to my website, arthabricks.com.
00:41:11I won the Guinness World's Record for the world's weirdest
00:41:14reading list.
00:41:15That's a lie.
00:41:15I just lied.
00:41:16That's not true.
00:41:16But I could, who knows, if they've
00:41:18got that world's record.
00:41:20These are all great leisure reading books for you.
00:41:24They've been leisure reading books for me.
00:41:26I didn't make any money from reading these things.
00:41:28If that's your goal for your leisure from 6 to 7,
00:41:31then hit it, man.
00:41:32I mean, 6 to 7 in the morning, boom, you're reading.
00:41:35You're not wasting your time.
00:41:37You've got your book open and ready.
00:41:38I recommend that if you're going to get up first thing and do
00:41:41that, leave it by the couch or the chair
00:41:43where you're actually going to do your reading.
00:41:45Open to the page where you're going to start,
00:41:47so you don't waste any time at all.
00:41:49Start walking right on time.
00:41:51I mean, it's like, ding, ding, ding, there's the alarm.
00:41:54Out you go.
00:41:55If you go to a museum this Saturday for your leisure time,
00:41:58get there on time, like a business appointment.
00:42:01If you're not as serious about the time as a business
00:42:03appointment, you're not taking your leisure seriously,
00:42:06and you're not an elite leisure athlete.
00:42:09That's number two.
00:42:10Don't waste your time.
00:42:10Number three, set specific leisure goals.
00:42:14Set goals for what you're actually trying
00:42:15to achieve in your heart and mind and soul with your leisure.
00:42:21We're very goal-oriented people, and we get more learning
00:42:24and generativity.
00:42:25We also get more happiness when we make progress in our lives.
00:42:30You shouldn't just have progress with respect
00:42:32to the gym and the job.
00:42:34You should be making progress with respect to your leisure
00:42:37as well.
00:42:38So if during your leisure time, which again, this is not just
00:42:41chilling, if you've decided, look,
00:42:43I'm going to read the whole Bible.
00:42:46Because, I mean, I don't care.
00:42:48And by the way, even if you're an atheist,
00:42:51you should read the whole Bible, because it's
00:42:53the most influential book that's ever been written in society.
00:42:56So you've got to know it.
00:42:58You've got to know it to understand all these weird
00:43:00things that people say.
00:43:01If you completely disagree with it,
00:43:03at least you've got to understand it.
00:43:04So read the whole Bible.
00:43:05But that's a leisure activity, understanding leisure the way
00:43:08that we've defined it in this episode.
00:43:10So that means set about a goal of doing it.
00:43:13There's a million apps that you can get.
00:43:15There's a million plans online that you
00:43:18can get for reading the Bible in a whole year
00:43:20in a particular way, where you're reading it
00:43:22during a particular period of time,
00:43:24and you're thinking about what it actually means.
00:43:26And again, if you're not religious,
00:43:27you're not thinking about what it means for your soul.
00:43:30You're just thinking about literally what's
00:43:31going on historically or whatever.
00:43:33But make the goal of actually reading the whole Bible
00:43:35and pound through it in a particular year.
00:43:38It's unbelievably satisfying.
00:43:39You're like, wow, finished Leviticus.
00:43:41It's like, are you going to read Leviticus just on your own?
00:43:44No, you've got to structure it.
00:43:45And you've got to set a goal to actually get it done.
00:43:48If you're a meditator, work up in your meditation to the point
00:43:51that you can do a week-long retreat
00:43:53and put it on your calendar.
00:43:54If you're listening to music and you're
00:43:56focusing on a particular composer--
00:43:58and I recommend Johann Sebastian Bach, who was the greatest
00:44:00composer who ever lived.
00:44:01Hey, man, I'm going to do an episode on Bach.
00:44:05Bach, if you want to understand how Bach can change your life,
00:44:09you need to start listening to Bach.
00:44:10But listen to a little bit each day.
00:44:12Figure out some way, talk to somebody.
00:44:14Or online, there are a million programs on this, too,
00:44:17to learn the appreciation of how Bach's music works.
00:44:21And then go to a concert in six months of the Bach's B Minor
00:44:26Mass, his 1749 masterpiece.
00:44:30That was the culmination of the Hiber Oak.
00:44:32But do the work that leads up to making these particular goals
00:44:35come alive in your life.
00:44:38Now, these are the three protocols.
00:44:40Let me go back to one quick question.
00:44:41Josef Pieper asserted that leisure
00:44:44is the basis of culture.
00:44:46Is it?
00:44:47It's not 1964 anymore when he wrote this book.
00:44:50I don't think leisure is the basis of our culture, at least
00:44:54leisure properly understood.
00:44:55I think that one of the biggest problems that we have--
00:44:57and don't get me wrong, I love the free enterprise system.
00:45:01But I think that work is the basis of our culture.
00:45:03I really do in the United States.
00:45:05And that's a big problem, because what
00:45:07we elect to do when we're not getting paid,
00:45:10that's really who we are as people.
00:45:13And if really we're doing two things, working and then trying
00:45:17to gasp for air so that we can come back and work some more,
00:45:21that's a big problem.
00:45:23That's a society that's deeply, deeply ill.
00:45:26And I think for a lot of people, and you
00:45:28could argue for big parts of our culture,
00:45:31that isn't in point of fact the case.
00:45:32And let's get personal.
00:45:34Me too, the worst parts of my life
00:45:37were when my species was not Homo sapiens.
00:45:40I was Homo economicus.
00:45:42And it is only in parts of my life
00:45:45when I've learned to understand and to practice work and leisure
00:45:50in an appropriate balance has the culture of my family,
00:45:54the culture that I'm trying to be part of, the way
00:45:57that I'm trying to actually add generatively
00:45:58to the culture to which I belong, been better.
00:46:01And that's mostly driven by what people
00:46:03aren't paying me to do, which is the beautiful thing.
00:46:06My guess is that if I'm doing anything good for you here
00:46:09right now, it's because of what's actually going on
00:46:11in my heart and my brain and my soul and my mind
00:46:14when I'm not actually doing my work,
00:46:16when I'm communing with the people that I love,
00:46:18when I'm in periods of contemplation and prayer,
00:46:22when I'm trying to understand who I am, when I am,
00:46:25as Josef Pieper would say, engaging in leisure properly
00:46:29understood.
00:46:29So what about you?
00:46:31Do you need a tune up?
00:46:32You need to get better at it?
00:46:34If you do this, I promise you, you're not going to be sorry.
00:46:37Your life's going to get better.
00:46:39But if you do, don't forget to share.
00:46:42Because if you do, that'll make it permanent.
00:46:44You'll be accountable to it.
00:46:45Well, that's where we are with leisure.
00:46:46Let me take a couple of quick questions before we close.
00:46:49As we always do, we like to take questions
00:46:52at the end of the episode.
00:46:53This is a nice question from Zoe Krizak on email.
00:46:56Thanks, Zoe.
00:46:57I believe when people volunteer with us
00:47:00and she runs a nonprofit organization,
00:47:02they become happier.
00:47:04Is that true?
00:47:04How do we prove it?
00:47:05Yes.
00:47:06I wrote a whole book on that.
00:47:07The first book I ever wrote that anybody ever read--
00:47:10I'd written many terrible, boring academic books before that.
00:47:14But the first book I ever wrote was called Who Really Cares
00:47:17in 2006.
00:47:18And by the way, it was really academic and boring.
00:47:21But the reason people read it is because, weirdly,
00:47:23the President of the United States
00:47:25read it and talked about it.
00:47:27It completely changed my life when that happened, trust me.
00:47:29But it's a book about who gives and who doesn't
00:47:31and what it does for people's lives.
00:47:33And that book, Who Really Cares, really
00:47:35has a ton of research in it about all the beautiful things
00:47:38that actually happen to people when they give to others.
00:47:41That's a form of transcendence, to transcend yourself.
00:47:43One of the best ways you can make your life better
00:47:45is getting away from yourself.
00:47:47And the best way you can do that is by loving and serving
00:47:49other people.
00:47:50And the easiest way to do that is to go volunteer.
00:47:53Easiest way to do that is to go volunteer.
00:47:55I promise you, you won't be sorry.
00:47:57Thanks for that, Zoe.
00:47:58Holly Johnson by email.
00:48:00How does one overcome skepticism and cynicism in others?
00:48:04How to show them that expressing gratitude
00:48:07isn't a chump's exercise in futility.
00:48:09Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:48:11Here's how you do it.
00:48:12You model it.
00:48:13Don't harangue anybody.
00:48:14Say, don't be such a cynic.
00:48:15Nobody wants to hear that.
00:48:17That will change nobody's heart.
00:48:18The way that they do that is by seeing your own genuineness.
00:48:21There's a funny thing about cynicism.
00:48:23Skepticism can be problematic, but I'm
00:48:26a lot less worried about it.
00:48:27And by the way, cynicism and skepticism,
00:48:30they actually come from two different schools
00:48:32of ancient Greek philosophy, the cynics and the skeptics.
00:48:36And the skeptics were a lot more awesome.
00:48:40So who knows?
00:48:41I'll talk about that maybe in a future episode.
00:48:43But the whole point is that there's
00:48:45a kind of a tendency to bond with each other around cynicism.
00:48:48This is a drag, man.
00:48:50And you kind of bond over shared cynicism and negativity
00:48:54about current events.
00:48:56Don't let that be you.
00:48:58The boss is a jerk.
00:48:59The weather's crummy.
00:49:01It's kind of how, when you have teenage kids,
00:49:03the ones you don't want them to hang out with
00:49:05are the ones who are the most cynical.
00:49:08This is, if you're anybody who's my age,
00:49:09that's the Eddie Haskell effect.
00:49:11That's a famous character from an old sitcom from the '60s.
00:49:15It actually predates me.
00:49:16I don't remember when it was the first run,
00:49:17called Leave It to Beaver.
00:49:19And they had this friend who was super nice to the grown-ups.
00:49:21As soon as they left, he was like this smart aleck cynic.
00:49:24And everybody didn't want their kid
00:49:25to have an Eddie Haskell friend.
00:49:27But you do have these friends.
00:49:29And they're not good for you, is the whole point.
00:49:31The way that you actually get better friends
00:49:33and become a happier person,
00:49:34and the way that you overcome skepticism and cynicism
00:49:37is to stop being so skeptical and stop being so cynical,
00:49:40is what it comes down to.
00:49:42You won't actually be contagious toward other people,
00:49:45and you'll be more immune to it.
00:49:46You'll be more boring on social media, I promise you,
00:49:48but that's the kind of boring you want.
00:49:50Last but not least, Sandeep Arora sends a nice email.
00:49:54As a parent, I'm trying to figure out
00:49:55how to help my child build the same foundation
00:49:58that I'm trying to build,
00:50:00how to learn happiness, practice it,
00:50:01and carry it into adulthood.
00:50:03How do you do that?
00:50:04Same idea that I just talked about with Holly, model it.
00:50:07With kids, it's a funny thing,
00:50:08especially if they're your kids.
00:50:10You can harangue them all you want, it doesn't matter.
00:50:12They will do more or less what they see,
00:50:14especially in the long run.
00:50:15It's extraordinary to me with adult kids now
00:50:17to see they do all the stuff that I,
00:50:20for better and for worse, that I used to do.
00:50:22They're just, they're turning into me.
00:50:24Ah, you're right.
00:50:25But a lot of things I like, the things that I saw,
00:50:28people ask all the time,
00:50:29how do I make my kids grow up
00:50:31and practice my religious faith?
00:50:32And the answer, it doesn't matter what you tell them.
00:50:35It matters what they see.
00:50:36Do they see you on your knees?
00:50:37Do they see you in reverence for the divine?
00:50:40Well, the same thing is true
00:50:41for any of the happiness principles that we talk about.
00:50:44Do they see you being grateful?
00:50:46Do they see you being impeccably honest and kind,
00:50:48even when you don't need to be, or when it's not warranted?
00:50:52That's actually how they learn it, is by you modeling it.
00:50:55So I hope that helps.
00:50:57We've come to the end of another episode.
00:50:59If you liked it, please do share this with your friends.
00:51:02Leave a rating that helps the algorithmic gods
00:51:05of smile on us a little bit more.
00:51:08Like and subscribe, and let me know your thoughts.
00:51:10officehowers@arthabricks.com.
00:51:12Leave a comment.
00:51:14I'll read it, positive, negative.
00:51:17Follow me on the social media networks that you like.
00:51:21I'm on a lot on Instagram and LinkedIn
00:51:24and the other platforms as well.
00:51:25And order the meaning of your life.
00:51:28It's a nice present for other people.
00:51:30And maybe you can use it yourself.
00:51:32We can all use a little bit more meaning.
00:51:34Hope you enjoy it.
00:51:35And I hope you enjoy your week,
00:51:38bringing these ideas to other people.
00:51:39Don't forget that leisure is part of your life
00:51:42and leisure will make you happier
00:51:44if you do it like an elite athlete.
00:51:46See you next week.
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