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Practice deep play
‘It is not enough merely to switch off the lights which play upon the main and ordinary field of interest; a new field of interest must be illuminated.’
‘It is no use saying … “I will lie down and think of nothing”’
‘It is only when new cells are called into activity, when new stars become the lords of the ascendant, that relief, repose, refreshment are afforded.’
Winston Churchill, on the importance of what I would call deep play. He himself focussed on painting for this.
In this uncertain and ever-changing pandemic world, we are all finding ourselves in need of rest, yet it is “necessary but not sufficient” to sleep, to take time off, to choose other basic forms of rest. To truly feel restored, we must actively focus on rest as a skill and focus on the many forms it can and must take for us.
A recent post on Pysche: “How to rest well” cover this in more depth. As for me, today I choose to focus you on the idea of deep play, of focussing on something different.
Anything that really takes you out of your normal work and that you must focus on deeply can be “deep play”, or even “deep work” and both can be equally restorative depending on the activity and the individual. I wrote about this at more length in “Slow-motion multitasking” some three years ago.
