I have no problem stopping my paid work or my PhD research at the end of the day. When the clock hits 5:00 PM, I close my laptop and step away. Work has a clear routine, set expectations, and an agreed-upon point where the day is done.
The problem starts when I have actual free time.
On my days off, I find myself building strict schedules for things that are supposed to be fun. I set targets to read at least 100 pages of a book, complete 10,000 steps, clean the house, and finish specific milestones on a craft project.
If I miss these goals, I don’t feel relaxed. I feel guilty, restless, and convinced that I haven’t earned the right to sit down.
I know, intellectually, that life shouldn’t be about optimizing every hour. Yet on a weekend, I treat my hobbies like an unpaid second shift.
The Problem with Turning Hobbies into Tasks
The most frustrating part of this habit is that it ruins the activities I genuinely enjoy.
When I read, I often find myself checking the page numbers at the bottom of the sheet, calculating how many pages are left until I hit my goal. Instead of being immersed in the story, I’m monitoring my progress.
The same thing happens with crafting. I enjoy crochet, but complex patterns require constant stitch counting, which can start to feel tense and obsessive.
I prefer repetitive rows because I can zone out, but even then, I tend to stack activities—listening to an audiobook or putting a show on in the background while I work. It is as if leisure only counts if I am multitasking it.
These experiences could be a form of leisure anxiety—the distress or guilt that comes from unstructured downtime.
When we attach quotas to our hobbies, we trigger what behavioral psychology calls the overjustification effect.
By introducing arbitrary metrics (like pages read or steps taken), an activity that was originally fun starts to feel like an obligation. The brain treats the hobby like work, and the sense of play disappears.
Why Stillness Feels Uncomfortable
I used to think this was just a bad habit, but looking closer, it is clearly a way to manage anxiety.
A completely blank day off is overwhelming. Having no schedule creates decision fatigue: with endless options for what I could do, I don’t know where to start.
If I sit on the sofa with two open hours ahead of me, I feel physically restless. I pace around the house and invent tasks just to stay busy. Scheduling my day is a way to avoid that empty, unsettled feeling.
Some of this feeling could stem from being autistic – preferring a routine to manage the uncertainty of what comes next.
Some of this also traces back to my childhood. As the eldest daughter with younger or more vulnerable siblings and a stressed-out parent, I learned early on that relaxing in plain sight felt risky.
If the atmosphere was stressful or there were chores to be done, sitting around felt selfish, and I worried about being criticized for being lazy.
Staying busy was a shield. Doing homework or cleaning proved I was being helpful and kept me out of trouble. The only place I could truly relax was in my bedroom with the door shut, where no one could see what I was doing.
Even now as an adult, my role in the family is the “helpful eldest daughter,” and I feel uncomfortable sharing more personal details of my life with my family because this doesn’t fit the role that was assigned to me.
Even though I have my own home now and no one is monitoring me, that old reflex hasn’t gone away. Without a schedule, sitting still in the living room feels wrong, so I keep manufacturing things to do.
The End-of-Day Paradox
The irony of this mindset is how the day usually ends.
Part of the reason I schedule my weekends so heavily is to avoid wasting hours scrolling on social media. But running from task to task all day is exhausting. By evening, my energy is completely depleted from trying to hit all my arbitrary targets.
Once I decide the “productive” day is technically over, the only way I end up unwinding is through mindless doomscrolling.
Because my brain won’t let me relax during the day without feeling guilty, a numb scroll on my phone becomes the only kind of downtime I allow myself. It is the only state where the internal pressure to achieve finally turns off.
Learning to Tolerate the Unfinished
I haven’t fixed this yet. I still catch myself checking page counts and setting rigid goals on Saturday mornings.
Telling myself to “just relax” doesn’t work, because trying to relax properly just becomes another goal to fail. Instead, the small change I am trying to practice is simply getting comfortable with leaving things undone.
Sometimes, that means stopping a book on page 40 instead of pushing to 100, even when I have time left. It means leaving a crochet project half-finished on the table without tidying it away. The urge to get up and finish it is uncomfortable, and the restless feeling doesn’t instantly vanish.
But sitting with that discomfort—even for just ten minutes—is the only way to remind myself that free time doesn’t need to be earned, and a hobby doesn’t have to be completed to be worthwhile.
Having a routine soothes my autistic mind, but it can become problematic when I obsess over making everything a structured routine.
Instead, my goal will be to have less-specific plans for the day. For example, I can plan to read a book for an hour, but do not set a page goal. If I have finished the hour with only 10 pages read because I spent a lot of the hour mind-wandering, I have still achieved my goal of reading for an hour.
This adjustment to my life is likely easier said than done, but the hope is that with practice, and sitting in the discomfort, I can feel safer to simply do nothing and truly relax my mind.
