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This article is part of SELF’s Rest Week, an editorial package dedicated to doing less. If the last few years have taught us anything, it’s that taking care of yourself, physically and emotionally, is impossible without genuine downtime. With that in mind, we’ll be publishing articles up until the new year to help you make a habit of taking breaks, chilling out, and slowing down. (And we’re taking our own advice: The SELF staff will be OOO during this time!) We hope to inspire you to take it easy and get some rest, whatever that looks like for you.
You might think that if you had more hours in a day—or you could magically clone yourself Multiplicity-style—you’d feel more satisfied with your life. Maybe you’d sign up to run your first 5K, end your revenge bedtime procrastination, plant that garden in your backyard, or say yes to your preschooler’s seventh request to play dress-up (even if it means pinning a cloth tail to your shorts and pretending you’re a dog while your child walks you around the kitchen—true story).
Cassie Holmes, PhD, the author of Happier Hour: How to Beat Distraction, Expand Your Time, and Focus on What Matters Most, calls the feeling of having too much to do and not enough time to do it “time poverty.” Though research suggests that mothers tend to feel particularly time-impoverished, it’s certainly not exclusive to moms, or even to parents. No matter your family, employment, or relationship status, modern life can be a lot.
The encouraging news is that you may not need to clear your schedule in order to feel less overwhelmed. According to a 2021 study coauthored by Dr. Holmes in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, more free time doesn’t necessarily correlate to greater happiness. The study, which looked at self-reported data from more than 35,000 people in the US, found that not only can having too little leisure time stress you out (duh), but so can having too much, which can undermine your sense of purpose and productivity. The optimal range of discretionary time (or time spent doing whatever you want) according to the study? Two to five hours per day. Participants who had more free time than that didn’t report significantly higher levels of well-being than those with that amount. In some cases, folks with a lot of time on their hands said they felt less satisfied with their lives.
Here’s the trick: What you do in those two to five hours matters. “Within that window, happiness is about how you spend whatever time you have,” Dr. Holmes tells SELF. Three hours of doom-scrolling will likely yield very different results than two hours of catching up with your best friend and favorite Housewives over snacks. (It’s important to note that if you’re dealing with a draining mental health issue or exhaustion from caregiver or work burnout, you might need more than a handful of free hours, at least in the short-term, in order to rest and recover.)
If you’re feeling resentful about your lack of downtime, Dr. Holmes says that, instead of focusing on the time you don’t have, aim to spend the time you do have more strategically. Organizing your days to include less of what hampers your happiness, more of what matters, and just enough time to do nothing at all may help you feel less strapped. In other words, with a few schedule adjustments, you might be able to find your downtime sweet spot. Here are five relatively simple ways to start working toward a life of (sufficient) leisure.
1. Take stock of your current free time.
“Discretionary time is time spent how you want, not how you have to,” Dr. Holmes explains—so not just the hours you aren’t working or sleeping. To see how much free time you actually have, grab a piece of paper or pull up a notes app for some simple math. Start by calculating any breaks or free time you have in a given day. Maybe you woke up early and squeezed in a 30-minute yoga session. At work, perhaps you took a 15-minute walk for coffee with an office buddy. If you listened to a favorite podcast or called your sister to dish about your day during your commute home, chalk up those minutes too. And it’s worth noting the minutes don’t need to be perfect to count. Was your 15-minute walk interrupted by a phone call from your demanding boss? That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t count the time if you enjoyed it overall.
“Two hours sounds like a luxury for some of us, but if you actually look at your day and calculate, you’ll see that it adds up,” Dr. Holmes says. “You might find that you’re already close to two hours of time you wouldn’t have wanted to spend any other way.” Recognizing that this sweet spot is within reach without having to make any drastic life changes is important, because knowing that something is achievable creates a sense of hope rather than hopelessness, Dr. Holmes says.
2. Try to cut the fluff.
If your discretionary time typically falls short of two hours, Dr. Holmes suggests hunting for waste. Specifically, you’re looking for minutes (and sometimes hours) that you spend in ways that don’t feel fulfilling. Unfortunately, work and commuting take up a big chunk of time for a lot of people. Though those activities probably can’t be ditched, you might be able to at least make them more satisfying by scheduling in joy, Dr. Holmes says. (Here are more of her tips for a less depleting workweek).
With everything else, she recommends looking for what you can cull. “One way to increase your available time is to reduce the amount of time you spend scrolling social media,” Dr. Holmes writes in Happier Hour. “This can lessen how much you enviously ruminate on all the glamorous (and cherry-picked) ways others are spending their time, for example. It will also free up actual minutes.” You don’t need to abstain from your apps altogether, but you could try keeping your phone in a drawer or another room so it’s less tempting, say, or setting a 30-minute social media limit for yourself in the evening—whatever feels doable to you. The goal isn’t to feel bad about how you spend time; it’s to look for minutes you can reclaim.
3. Outsource wherever possible.
For all the blech activities you must get done, Dr. Holmes recommends outsourcing wherever you can. If it’s financially feasible for you, swap a supermarket trip for a grocery delivery (make sure to tip very well), a time-consuming dinner prep with a meal delivery service, or another night of solo parenting for a sitter, all of which could lighten your load just enough to take a breath. “Time is a resource that matters. If you have the means, research shows that investing in time-saving products and services is worth it,” Dr. Holmes says. And the results from the study she’s referring to hold across income level, age, gender, marital status, and whether or not there are kids at home. That is, people who spend money to save time are happier than those who don’t.
If money is in short supply and you have friends who are similarly strapped (for money or time), you can try chore-sharing: Maybe your best bud can grab your grocery list and hit the store for both of you, and you can return the favor the following week. Or you could ask them to take your kid to the park so you can exercise for an hour tomorrow. Asking for help when you need a break is a mutually beneficial way to reclaim some of your time for yourself. Don’t have anyone in your immediate circle who can lend a hand? You can try searching online for local mutual aid groups or support communities, like Facebook groups for single parents or low-income families.
4. Give some time away (yes, really).
A surprising way to feel like you have more time, according to a 2012 study coauthored by Dr. Holmes, is to give some of it away. The researchers asked 100 people to spend 30 minutes on a typical Saturday either doing something for someone else or for themselves. What they discovered: The people who gave away their 30 minutes reported feeling like they had more time than those who used the half hour for personal pursuits. That’s right: Spending time on other people rather than keeping it to yourself is a legitimate way to feel less crunched for time. (And it’s also, you know, a kind thing to do.)
“People do nice things because it helps the other person, yes, but it can also make them feel good, and it doesn’t have to require a lot of time,” Dr. Holmes says. Even if you’re feeling rushed—which is when you might understandably feel the most stingy with your time—spending some of your precious minutes on others might give you a sense of accomplishment and competence, she says, which may have a refreshing effect on how you feel about your life and time.
To put this tip to use in your own life, think about random acts of kindness: Pay for someone’s coffee, help a neighbor carry groceries, leave someone a “just because” note with a piece of candy or flower they love, or give someone a genuine compliment (“Your laugh always makes me laugh!”). Just make sure your benevolent act is your choice and not something you feel obligated to do; otherwise, it may make you feel more “time poor” versus less, Dr. Holmes cautions. To know for sure, do a quick gut check: Does it feel like you’re giving your time or like it’s being taken from you? (You’re not a bad person if volunteering on a particularly busy weekend feels like too much!)
5. Schedule your highest priorities first (including “do nothing” time).
Another path to time poverty, according to Dr. Holmes: filling up your personal schedule without prioritizing the activities that matter most to you or leaving space for rest. On the flip side, if you’re more selective, you’re more likely to get your downtime needs met, she says. One reason it can be tough to do that, though, is that, according to a 2005 study Dr. Holmes cites in Happier Hour, people tend to assume they will have more time in the future than they have now and, as a result, overcommit—which can lead to a suffocating schedule.
Distinguish meaningful plans that are worth your commitment (like spending time with loved ones, honing a pottery or yoga passion, or helping out at a nonprofit that’s close to your heart) from filler activities that may end up making you feel “time poor” in the end. To do this, Dr. Holmes suggests applying a happiness filter: As much as you’re able to, agree only to activities you would be happy to spend time on today, rather than at some point in the future.
Dr. Holmes strongly advises penciling in “do nothing” time, as well. When you totally fill up your calendar, even with intention, it can end up wearing you out. “It leaves no space for spontaneity or living in the moment, so you may need to actively schedule free time—even if you can only spare a few hours on the weekend or one or two free nights per week—to feel less drained,” she says.
6. Don’t let distraction derail you.
Once you’ve rejiggered your schedule so you’re prioritizing what matters and holding space for doing less (or nothing at all), it’s time to dial into whatever you’re spending your time on, Dr. Holmes says. A well-known study from 2010 suggests that people aren’t focused on what they’re doing almost half the time. You know the feeling: You’ve just spent an hour baking cookies with your second grader and, at the end, you realize you’ve been secretly scrolling social media under the table. Or while your partner was dishing about her bad day at work, you were brainstorming your own work ideas rather than actively listening.
Let’s be real: Distraction isn’t always a bad thing. It allows us to muddle through challenges and still function. But you don’t want to miss half your life by pushing away the now or planning what’s next. In our day-to-day lives, Dr. Holmes says, we tend to be inattentive to the present moment, which can undermine our happiness. “So you have to make time for those activities that bring you joy, yes, but also pay attention during those times, such that you feel joy,” she says.
If meditation is already part of your daily (or once-in-a-while) routine, good for you. Rely on those presence techniques to ward off distraction when it threatens to kill an otherwise fulfilling moment. But if you’re new to the game or simply want a quicker way to drop into the present, Dr. Holmes recommends trying the simple five-senses meditation, a quick grounding practice that involves paying attention to what you’re hearing, seeing, touching, tasting, and smelling. You can use this tool just about anywhere to help you tune into your body and surroundings, so you can enjoy your leisure time (and the people spending it with you) more fully. As with so many things in life, quality, not quantity, might give you exactly what you need.
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