Two Kinds of Relaxing

"There are 2 kinds of relaxing. There's where you get nothing done and there is the type where you reflect, strategize, and meditate."
(from my tweets, 2015)

During those years, I didn't go out much. When I did take time off, I tweeted, it usually looked like "meditation, strategizing, reflecting, and journaling." Another time I wrote: "My new thing is just reflecting and meditating a lot then just coming up with one idea that sets me weeks forward."

Back then, I valued that quiet time mostly because it made me more productive. Since then I've come to see it as something more: one of the most reliable ways I know to feel calm and clear. And science has a lot to say about why sitting still with your own mind is both harder and more valuable than it sounds.

Why sitting alone with your thoughts is so hard

In 1670, the French philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote in his Pensées that "all the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber."

More than three centuries later, psychologist Timothy Wilson and his colleagues tested this idea. In a 2014 study published in Science, they asked people to sit alone in a room with nothing to do but think, for just 6 to 15 minutes. Most participants found it unpleasant. In one experiment, people were given the option to give themselves a mild electric shock during the thinking period. A striking number of them did it, including people who had earlier said they would pay money to avoid being shocked. Doing something, even something painful, felt better than doing nothing.

That tells us something important. Quiet reflection doesn't come naturally to most of us. It's a skill. And like most skills, it gets easier with practice.

A wandering mind is an unhappy mind

In 2010, Harvard researchers Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert used a smartphone app to check in with thousands of people at random moments during the day. They asked what people were doing, what they were thinking about, and how happy they felt.

They found that people's minds were wandering away from what they were doing nearly half the time, about 47 percent. And people were generally less happy when their minds were wandering than when they were focused on the present, regardless of the activity. The title of their paper summed it up: "A wandering mind is an unhappy mind."

This is where the two kinds of relaxing come in. Scrolling and zoning out often leave the mind drifting, rehashing worries or reliving old conversations. Deliberate reflection and meditation do the opposite: they bring attention back to one place on purpose.

What meditation actually does

Meditation has been studied extensively, and it's worth being precise about what the evidence shows. A 2014 review in JAMA Internal Medicine led by Madhav Goyal analyzed 47 clinical trials of meditation programs. It found moderate evidence that mindfulness meditation can reduce anxiety, depression and pain. The effects were similar in size to what other common treatments achieve in similar populations, but meditation was not a miracle cure.

That's the honest picture: meditation is a real, useful tool. Not magic, but worth a few minutes a day.

Writing it down

The "journaling" part of my old routine has research behind it too. Starting in the 1980s, psychologist James Pennebaker ran studies where people wrote about their deepest thoughts and feelings for 15 to 20 minutes on a few consecutive days. Compared to people who wrote about neutral topics, the expressive writers made fewer visits to the health center in the months that followed.

Writing seems to help us organize experiences that otherwise loop around in our heads. Putting a worry into words often makes it smaller.

Good ideas come in the quiet

What about my claim that reflection led to big ideas? There's some support for that too. In a 2012 study, Benjamin Baird and colleagues gave people a creative problem, then a break. Those who spent the break on an easy, undemanding task, the kind that lets the mind roam freely, came back and solved more of the problems they had already seen than people who rested or did a demanding task.

So there seem to be two kinds of mind wandering as well: the anxious, ruminating kind, and the relaxed, open kind that gives ideas room to form. The difference is often whether we've set aside time for it on purpose.

A retreat within yourself

Marcus Aurelius, who ran the Roman Empire, kept a private journal that we now call the Meditations. In Book 4, he wrote that people look for retreats in the countryside, by the sea or in the mountains, but that "nowhere can a man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul." He told himself to take that retreat often, and to come back renewed.

He didn't need a vacation. He needed a few minutes alone with his thoughts.

How to practice the good kind of relaxing

• Start with five minutes. Sit somewhere quiet, close your eyes, and focus on your breathing. When your mind wanders, gently bring it back. That's the whole practice.
• Journal without editing. Write for ten minutes about whatever is on your mind. Don't worry about grammar or making sense.
• Take a walking break. An easy walk without your phone is one of the best ways to let ideas surface.
• End the day with one question. Ask yourself, "What's one thing I learned today?" and write down the answer.
• Notice the difference. After a session of scrolling and after a session of reflection, check in with how you feel. Let that guide which one you choose next time.

Today's reflection

Not all rest is the same. Some rest drains us, and some rest restores us. The restoring kind usually asks for a little discomfort at first: putting the phone down and sitting with your own mind.

Today, try giving yourself ten minutes of the second kind of relaxing. You might come away calmer. You might even come away with an idea that sets you weeks forward.

Sources

• Pascal, B. (1670). Pensées, 139 (Brunschvicg numbering).
• Wilson, T. D., Reinhard, D. A., Westgate, E. C., Gilbert, D. T., Ellerbeck, N., Hahn, C., Brown, C. L., & Shaked, A. (2014). Just think: The challenges of the disengaged mind. Science, 345(6192), 75–77.
• Killingsworth, M. A., & Gilbert, D. T. (2010). A wandering mind is an unhappy mind. Science, 330(6006), 932.
• Goyal, M., Singh, S., Sibinga, E. M. S., et al. (2014). Meditation programs for psychological stress and well-being: A systematic review and meta-analysis. JAMA Internal Medicine, 174(3), 357–368.
• Pennebaker, J. W., & Beall, S. K. (1986). Confronting a traumatic event: Toward an understanding of inhibition and disease. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 95(3), 274–281.
• Baird, B., Smallwood, J., Mrazek, M. D., Kam, J. W. Y., Franklin, M. S., & Schooler, J. W. (2012). Inspired by distraction: Mind wandering facilitates creative incubation. Psychological Science, 23(10), 1117–1122.
• Marcus Aurelius. Meditations, 4.3.