CreativeRx: The death of leisure time is here - this is how we save it

1-2-1: The trifecta of leisure erosion, how to save a sick society and why I'm only reading pre-Internet books

Sep 07, 2025

Hey crew - Katina here, Daydreamers’ Co-founder and Creative Health Scientist. If you’re new here, welcome to our crew! If you’re a familiar friend, happy Sunday 🪐

This newsletter was built out of something I was personally craving: exposure to a variety high quality creative ideas. I didn’t want another information roundup to skim - so, think of these as the inputs I’m personally feeding my creative brain this week. What I’m mulling over on my Awe Walks, in my alone time and in-between moments.

It’s like a dose of CreativeRx: 1 idea from me. 2 inputs from others. 1 moment of inspiration.

1 IDEA FROM ME: OUR LEISURE TIME IS UNDER ATTACK

You might read that headline and think it’s an exaggeration.

Leisure time? Under “attack”? How is that possible - and frankly, why does that matter, particularly in a time where it feels like much more important things are “under attack”?

I’m not sure exactly what piece of news this week hit me hard - maybe hearing about The Smithsonian’s historical revision or reading this piece on Disney - but my mind has been weighing heavy. It feels like every part of our lives, from the way we spend our free time to the way we think, is becoming monetized, individualized and completely, passively consumed.

And then (!), just as I was preparing to write next week's Deep Dive, I re-read this passage by Mihaly Csíkszentmihály, originally written in 1990. It stopped me in my tracks. And frankly, broke something open in me.

I think it’s so important that I want you to read it in full - not quick excerpts - and we’ll talk about why in a moment:

"Over sixty years ago, the great American sociologist, Robert Park, already noted - ‘It is in the improvident use of our leisure, I suspect, that the greatest wastes of American life occur.’

The tremendous leisure industry that has arisen in the past few generations has been designed to help us fill free time with enjoyable experiences. Nevertheless, instead of using our physical and mental resources to experience flow, most of us spend many hours each week watching celebrated athletes playing in enormous stadiums. Instead of making music, we listen to platinum records cut by millionaire musicians. Instead of making art, we go to admire paintings that brought in the highest bids at the latest auction.

We do not run risks acting on our beliefs, but occupy hours each day watching actors who pretend to have adventures, engaged in mock-meaningful action.

This vicarious participation is able to mask, at least temporarily, the underlying emptiness of wasted time. But, it is a very pale substitute for attention invested in real challenges. The flow experiences that results from the use of skills leads to growth - passive entertainment leads nowhere. Collectively, we are wasting each year the equivalent of millions of years of human consciousness.

Mass leisure, mass culture and even high culture when only attended to passively and for extrinsic reasons - such as the wish to flaunt one's status - are parasites of the mind. They absorb psychic energy without providing substantive strength in return. They leave us more exhausted, more disheartened than we were before.

Most jobs and many leisure activities - especially those involving passive consumption of mass media - are not designed to make us happy and strong. Their purpose is to make money for someone else. If we allow them to, they can suck out the marrow of our lives, leaving only feeble husks.

But, like everything else, work and leisure can be appropriated for our needs. People who do not waste their free time end up feeling that their lives as a whole have become much more worthwhile.

‘The future,’ wrote C.K. Brightbill, ‘will not belong only to the educated man, but to the man who is educated to use his leisure wisely.’"

Hitting you in the heart, too? Remember - Csíkszentmihály wrote this long before the age of Tiktok scrolling and reality TV even existed. Honestly, it was even before the Internet.

In that thirty year span, so much has stayed the same - and in my view, become amplified. To me, we are currently living through the Trifecta of Leisure Erosion:

Passive consumption: Majority of adults today spent hours (on average, 7 to be exact), scrolling, bingeing, spectating instead of doing. On the contrary, less than 50% of American adults have read 1 book in 2023.
Cultural atrophy: Unique to this moment in our history, our museums, libraries, and art institutions being defunded, sanitized, or politicized. Art is fundamentally how we shift the status quo - and when it’s silenced, we have no collective voice.
Monetized hobbies: When we do finally make art, music or play, they’re tied to extrinsic rewards - money, status or fame. Leisure time, even for ourselves, is optimized for an outcome.

Our leisure time is not something to be taken lightly. It’s not a luxury or an afterthought. How we spend it, value it and protect it speaks volumes about the society we live in.

Even more - from a selfish perspective - research shows that people who regularly engage in creative, cultural activities, like concerts, exhibitions, theater, are 31% more likely to live longer.

If you’ve read any of our work on Creative Health, you know that this is just scratching the surface. When we spend our time making, creating and enjoying - actively - we are more empathetic, more engaged and happier. And just last week, we saw that spending our time engaging in a variety of creative activities (just like Nobel Laureates!) can make us more original and creatively successful, too.

So, it’s time that we all begin to reclaim leisure like our lives depend on it. Because frankly, they do. If we keep abandoning creativity, our world will only become more lonely, angry and sad.

Let’s push back together: What’s one small way you can claw back your leisure time today?

From my brain to yours,

Katina, Creative Health Scientist & Daydreamers’ Co-founder / Chief Science Officer

This is one of our favorite POVs at Daydreamers - we’ve been referring back to Bertrand Russell’s essay, In Praise of Idleness, since our inception. It’s a must-read, especially now.

On what happens to a society when creativity is pushed to the backburner: “Dogmatists of all kinds - scientific, economic, moral, as well as political - are threatened by the creative freedom of the artist. We cannot escape our anxiety over the fact that the artists together with creative persons of all sorts, are the possible destroyers of our nicely ordered systems…so, the dogmatists then try to take over the artist. The church, in certain periods, harnessed him to prescribed subjects and methods. Capitalism tries to take over the artist by buying him. And Soviet realism tried to do so by social proscription. The result, by the very nature of the creative impulse, is fatal to art.”
-Rollo May, The Courage to Create, originally published back in 1975 (!)
On how to save a sad, angry and mean society: “We’re overpoliticized while growing increasingly undermoralized, underspiritualized, undercultured. The alternative is to rediscover the humanist code. It is based on the idea that unless you immerse yourself in the humanities, you may never confront the most important question: How should I live my life?”
- David Brooks, How to save a Sad, Lonely, Angry, Mean Society

1 MOMENT OF INSPIRATION

My Bookshelf: Reading Pre-Internet Books

I noticed a personal trend of mine over the past year or so - reading books that were written before the Internet existed. When I pulled back and thought about why, it wasn’t just that physical, hard copy books felt nostalgic.

The reasons, in hindsight, seemed obvious - if not overlooked: Their ideas were incredibly timeless, and felt even more relevant to my life than the daily content I’m exposed to. The depth of language and writing challenged my brain in a way I hadn’t felt in a long time. And honestly, I felt this interconnectedness with people and situations that felt so far from current reality. It reminded me: Nothing is as bad - or as good - as it seems.

We are inundated with content these days, but not all of it is made equally. What are you drawn to reading these days?

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