
Leisure Is Our Killer App - sarapeyton
https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/leisure-is-our-killer-app/
======
buttminer
I am a big fan of this. As a 25 year old, I feel that I was truly the last
general to experience what true boredom was like as a kid. Hanging out at the
school during the weekend wondering what to do - those days are over now.
Technology has definitely taken over our lives, and now there's always
something to do.

I believe that leisure time is something that most people don't have nor know
that they want. As the article states, it lets you think outside of the box
and come back with fresh ideas. In a work-centered society though, it's really
hard to justify spending that time. Even knowing all this, I still fall into
the trap of always being busy with something.

~~~
thesausageking
> I was truly the last general to experience what true boredom was like as a
> kid

Old guy chiming in. Every generation feels like this. Socrates lamented that
becoming literate would "create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because
they will not use their memories." In the 16th century, Swiss scientist,
Conrad Gessner, warned that the overabundance of information caused by the
printing press was "confusing and harmful". In 1940s, radio had caused
children to develop "the habit of dividing attention between the humdrum
preparation of their school assignments and the compelling excitement of the
loudspeaker." In my time, similar concerns were raised about cable TV and the
walkman.

~~~
keiferski
Pretty much all of the critics you mentioned were right in some small way.
Relying on printed material does have downsides compared to memorization - for
a modern example, consider the disadvantages of googling for information vs.
actually learning it.

~~~
mason55
There’s a difference between Googling and comprehension. Google is a great
substitute for remembering facts and details. It means there’s more room in my
brain for concepts and things that can’t just be Googled for.

Treat Google as an augmentation of your brain. You both do what you’re good at
(facts vs. concepts) and you end up better overall.

~~~
bellerose
I don't know if I completely believe the more room for your memory part.
That's my excuse for not memorizing things that take a few minutes to look up.
I don't necessarily believe it as a truth. I've heard the memory of people in
countries where paper is scarce tends to be amazing. This was before the
everyone had a phone. I think we would have to measure how much memory is
achievable for certain tasks before we can calculate room saved for concepts
and where the threshold becomes an advantage. Anyway I'm a skeptic either way.

------
diNgUrAndI
One tiny issue with leisure in general is unpredictability. An uncontrolled
mind can wander anywhere and come back (may not come back at all) in whatever
state, not necessarily charged and refreshed.

I wonder if there's anything like disciplined leisure, where you concentrate
on one thing intensively for a while, and you intentionally force yourself to
let go of those thoughts, divert your attention to something else and let sub-
consciousness deal with the topic. But the point is to come back to the same
thing at the end with new ideas and a refreshed mind.

Am I too naive?

~~~
taurath
Disciplined leisure is almost a contradiction in terms - how does one not
think of it as work?

~~~
atemerev
This is called “meditation”.

~~~
gpsx
Yes, meditation could be called disciplined leisure. I'm not sure if the post
you are responding to is getting at that. Meditation and minding wandering are
very different things, even opposites. But I think both are very useful for
that creative process. It would be interesting to examine the effects of these
two things in the context of this article.

~~~
verma7
There are broadly speaking two kinds of meditations: focussed meditation and
awareness meditation.

I heard a useful analogy of the mind being like an elephant that wants to
wander around on its own.

In focussed meditation, we try to focus your attention on our breath, or some
point inside our body or an idea. We tie the elephant with a rope to a pole.
If it wanders too far, we tug it and bring it back to the pole.

In awareness meditation, we just observe where the elephant roams wherever it
wants. That is more like leisurely mind wandering.

~~~
disqard
I'd like to recommend "The Mind Illuminated" by Culadasa John Yates. Besides
the elephant analogy, there is much actionable advice on meditation to be
found in that book.

------
perfunctory
In a world where no one is compelled to work more than four hours a day, every
person possessed of scientific curiosity will be able to indulge it, and every
painter will be able to paint without starving, however excellent his pictures
may be. Young writers will not be obliged to draw attention to themselves by
sensational pot-boilers, with a view to acquiring the economic independence
needed for monumental works, for which, when the time at last comes, they will
have lost the taste and capacity. Men who, in their professional work, have
become interested in some phase of economics or government, will be able to
develop their ideas without the academic detachment that makes the work of
university economists often seem lacking in reality. Medical men will have the
time to learn about the progress of medicine, teachers will not be
exasperatedly struggling to teach by routine methods things which they learnt
in their youth, which may, in the interval, have been proved to be untrue.

\-- Bertrand Russell

[http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html](http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html)

~~~
alexhutcheson
Unfortunately in practice it seems that people have actually responded to
increased leisure time by dramatically increasing the amount of time they
spend watching TV. That's certainly not true for everyone, but I think most
people need some external impetus or accountability to make progress and stay
on track towards their goals.

~~~
perfunctory
The pleasures of urban populations have become mainly passive: seeing cinemas,
watching football matches, listening to the radio, and so on. This results
from the fact that their active energies are fully taken up with work; if they
had more leisure, they would again enjoy pleasures in which they took an
active part.

\-- Bertrand Russell

[http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html](http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html)

------
perfunctory
> You can turn a machine off and on to reboot it, but this simply simulates
> sleep.

Not really. Human sleep is much more than simply turning off and on.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_and_memory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_and_memory)

~~~
kashyapc
Mandatory reference: the brilliant Matthew Walker:

[https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/295/295665/why-we-
sleep/9780...](https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/295/295665/why-we-
sleep/9780141983769.html)

I'm halfway through the book, and it has already influenced my behavior. I
began setting "to bed" alarm, just like I set "wake up" alarm.

If you don't have the time (?) to read the book, then at least listen to
Walker's presentation at "Talk at Google". (Not to mention, he's an
outstanding public speaker, too.) He has a segment where he talks about how
sleep hits the "save button" to preserve your memory (after learning) to
"persistent storage in your brain", as it were.

Walker's work is urgent and important.

~~~
jmkni
I'm reading this as well, about a quarter of the way through, so far it's
really interesting.

------
robohoe
Human mind is most creative when it's idle. That's where unplugging and
turning down your cellphone would help. With the advent of smart phones and
being constantly plugged in, I feel like we've lost our ability to be
creative. Instead now we always reach for the phone when we are bored.

------
hartator
> nobody is safe from being replaced by software, algorithms, and machines.

That’s a big leap. We yet have to prove we can make machines smarter than
human. It might be possible but it might be not. Like flying - as without huge
fans - cars.

~~~
zzzzzzzza
flying cars is an interesting analogy since it's entirely possible to make
one, it's just impractical

~~~
hartator
It's very far from the vision people had in 50-60s. We haven't found yet the
gravity fighting mechanism that will allow them.

We might find a novel way to fight gravity tomorrow, in another 50 years, or
never. Like AI. We might find a way to build truly intelligent computers
tomorrow, in 50 years, or never. However in both cases, it's ridiculous to try
to come up with rules for a non existing technology. It will be like people in
the 50-60s trying to make rules from the Internet.

------
leemailll
Leisure also is a luxury, not everyone could afford it when it is needed most

~~~
pseudosudoer
True, but the article isn't trying to say that everyone _can_ have time for
leisure, but rather everyone _should_ have time for leisure. An optimist may
say that with the advent of automation people should have more time for
leisure, where a pessimist may say that the poor will grow poorer.

~~~
bilbo0s
Why can't it be both?

Sure the poor will grow more poor, and also have a lot more free time due to
not having employment. That's not necessarily a _good_ thing, but it does
agitate for both the optimistic and pessimistic views being likely at once in
the future.

~~~
LeifCarrotson
> have a lot more free time due to not having employment

I assume you're advocating their support through some social safety net that
provides them with basic necessities.

Because currently, not having employment is a major loss in free time: you
spend all your time trying to meet core needs like food, shelter, and
clothing. Where an employed person can simply order take-out, hire a
contractor to fix their house, and buy new clothes as required, an
impoverished person will be scraping together safe food and trying to cook it
to be palatable, sheltering in uncomfortable or unsafe places, and repairing
clothes that are long since worn out. And if they do go to work, they earn a
pittance that's insufficient to pay rent, much less afford luxuries like
prepared food, home ownership, or durable clothing.

Unless you're extremely optimistic about social services improving, the poor
being poorer puts heavier burdens on their time, not lighter.

------
rmbryan
The article builds up to this: "By encouraging our minds to wander, leisure
activities pull us out of our present reality, which in turn can improve our
ability to generate novel ideas or ways of thinking."

Then wraps up and ends.

We don't have a killer app.

------
artur_makly
This is why I moved my family to Patagonia. The concept of Time is different
here. I've finally managed to do really deep work from my 'garage office'.

My best ideas come while either driving my son to school or taking a fishing
break on the lake just meters near our home. Back to Basics.

Weekends are 99% Tech-free now, and it's been amazing so far.

------
sanbor
> By encouraging our minds to wander, leisure activities pull us out of our
> present reality, which in turn can improve our ability to generate novel
> ideas or ways of thinking.

And then you get the post [Nobody Likes the “Idea
Guy”]([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19280907](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19280907)).

You can have great ideas but the hard part is the intersection between being
lucky to be able to apply them at work, those ideas to be relevant and execute
them properly.

------
nickjj
If anyone likes this sort of idea, they should check out the book: A Whack on
the Side of the Head: How You Can Be More Creative[0]

There's a section where he talks about thinking about other businesses or
activities that are outside of your main focus, and after you go through that
process you may come up with different ideas for your own business. It's
pretty easy too. Just look around your room or where ever you are for objects
and then think about how they are manufactured -- stuff like that.

I remember seeing a piece of lumber (I was reading outside) and it got me to
think about how efficient some lumber manufacturers are. They might make 2x4s
and other processed wood which they sell to retailers, but there's so much
waste produced during the process in the form of sawdust and those
manufacturers figured out how to sell their sawdust waste.

I never would have ever thought about something like that on my own, but it
got me to think about how I can reduce waste and cross pollinate some of the
things I create (code, blog posts, videos, etc.).

[0]: [http://amzn.to/2CqmvqH](http://amzn.to/2CqmvqH) (yes it's an Amazon
affiliate link and no I don't care if you Google it instead. I just happened
to have the link handy since I wrote about the book on my site in the past.)

------
revskill
Maybe one day, next generation of robots are not just robots. What if robots
are backed by real human DNA, while a CPU and RAM is of a machine.

------
pmichelman
One wonders if the ability for a technological "mind" to wander could be the
threshold of the singularity.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
I've wondered the same thing about dreaming.

------
TenJack
While leisure is great for human creativity, does that necessarily mean it is
an advantage over robot creativity?

------
asah
Why can't we program robots/etc to "wander" and use leisure themselves?

~~~
baroffoos
What do you mean by this? I assure you there is no difficulty on making a
robot move around randomly.

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fourier_mode
I don't see the point of rest. We are biologically bound to need a resting
period which is not the case for robots thereby making them superior species.
A robot would rather crawl more webpages and learn more than shutting down,
even we would like to finish those couple of side projects than sleeping off
but are unable to.

~~~
imgabe
A robot doesn't have a preference. It wouldn't "rather" do anything because
it's not sentient.

Machines don't need rest because they aren't capable of regeneration. They run
and damage accumulates until they break. Then they're done. You can run them
less and have the damage accumulate slower so they last longer, but they don't
heal themselves without somebody else to perform maintenance.

Living things on the other hand, do repair themselves while they rest. In
fact, they even grow stronger to better endure the stresses they experience.
So, that's the point of rest.

