If we’re exhausted after work, the obvious move is crashing on the couch. Sometimes that’s exactly what we need. But one of the more counterintuitive findings in recovery research is that doing something can restore us better than doing nothing. Perhaps it explains why I feel better after an improvisation class, and my husband recovers best by training for a marathon!
Sabine Sonnentag’s research identifies four experiences that drive recovery from work stress. Two are the ones we’d expect: psychological detachment, which means genuinely switching off from work in our heads, and relaxation, the classic wind-down. The third is a sense of control over our own time. And the fourth might be the surprising one: mastery.
Mastery experiences are off-work activities that challenge us: learning a language, a sport, an instrument, a pottery class, a tough tramp. On paper they look like more effort, which is the last thing a tired brain wants. In the research, they reliably restore energy and mood, sometimes better than pure rest.
Why would effort restore us? Partly because mastery gives the mind somewhere else to be. It’s very hard to ruminate about the project while learning a chord progression, so mastery delivers detachment as a side effect. And partly because it feeds something work may have been starving: the experience of getting better at something, on our own terms, with nobody’s KPIs attached.
There’s a trap hiding in this finding too. When we’re depleted, we tend to choose the lowest-effort leisure available, often looking at a screen. It asks nothing, and it gives roughly that back. The research suggests the evening that actually refills us often involves mild effort we didn’t feel like starting.
None of this is an argument against the couch, which has its place after a brutal day. It’s an argument for noticing what our tired selves reach for by default and occasionally overruling it.
A question worth trying this week: what’s one thing we used to enjoy getting better at, before work got too busy? That might be the most restorative thing on the list.
Human Foundations is a weekly look at the science behind high performance and wellbeing at work, from keynote speaker, psychiatrist, comedian and author Dr Jo Prendergast. Subscribe to get each edition as it lands.
Next week: why the holiday glow fades so fast, and what the research says to do about it.
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