Exploring the meaning of resting productively

As warm summer weather returns to Malta, its seasides once again fill with people. The water is still way too cold for even a quick dip, but its crescent-shaped beaches and smooth rocks lapped by gentle waves are now increasingly home to a kaleidoscope of beach towels, bikinis, picnic bags, and their owners. Couples chat away, doing little besides staring at the waves, friends sit in circles, laughing over sandwiches and soft drinks, while loners take turns napping on their backs and reading paperbacks, hoping to simultaneously get a tan and some knowledge.

For someone who spent most of his life living in urban areas, the idea of being so close to nature, so casually, remains surprising even after years living in Malta. I still remember "nature" as something that sometimes requires hours on trains or buses to get to, not to mention plenty of pre-planning and self-persuasion to convince myself that getting back home at dusk is much less of a hassle than I imagine. But only when the concrete jungle becomes a bit too constraining and its plethora of shops and restaurants too boring do I actually become motivated to head out. 

In the absence of Malta-like convenience in reaching nature, dwellers of major metropolises find themselves defining leisure in the confines of their cramped apartments. Eating out and shopping are not something one can partake in all the time due to budget constraints. So the replacement is what is available for free in cyberspace: window-shopping on e-emporiums, watching food vloggers review exotic cuisines, and imagining oneself being surrounded by polished photos of waterfalls, gorges, and vibrant mountains on Instagram.

One can argue that all forms of leisure are inherently escapism from the daily grind and the monotony of routines. After all, whether you physically go to Egypt and see the pyramids, or you see photos and videos of them online, the end result for both is that you need to come back to real life, where experiencing the pyramids in some way or form plays little practical role. The only difference between the physical travelers and doomscrollers, by this logic, is how strongly they feel about a certain escapist experience and thus their willingness to pay for it through treasure and sweat.

It was only after being sucked into hours of unplanned YouTube watching in between tasks that I started to see that the difference lies in much more than just how much money or energy one is willing to expend on recreation. Many faithful workers in the capitalist economy are socialized to believe in productivity, as defined by the output once gets in return for putting in time and effort. This way of thinking has become so ingrained in how we see the world that we subconsciously apply the idea even to designated periods away from work.

And just like a sense of achievement is unlocked at the workplace when the output is commended for quality, people seek the same mental reward from the productive quality of their rest. It is there that the doomscrolling ultimately fails the test. Sure, the initial effort that goes into opening up the internet browser is minimal, but the return is even less. One can watch video after video of others being wowed by historical architecture or the beauty of the natural world, but once the videos finish, that shared sense of wow almost dies immediately with the black screen.

In contrast, getting out to the physical world may seem mundane in output, but it provides a much more long-lasting feeling of having escaped. Even walking to the local beach and lying down on a towel gives that physical sensation of the warm sun on the body, the sound of the waves crashing ashore, the smell of the sea, and the touch of the soft sand, none of which can be truly replicated with our current digital technology. That feeling of being away does not need a headline sight like the pyramids, just a deeper, more comprehensive conviction that one really went somewhere completely different.

Being told to use our time efficiently, it is difficult for most of us to escape the curse of wanting to be more productive, even when no KPIs and quotas are systematically pushing us to be so. So why fight it when we are seeking out recreation? Instead, apply the same logic of productivity to rest, and let that same euphoria of achievement that guides work also decide how to rest. My experience taught me that browsing social media isn't it. Whatever temporary stimulation one gets fades too quickly to be any sustained output. Instead, look at those beach-loungers. They are not lazy, but onto something.