Why You Shouldn’t Plan Your Entertainment Too Carefully
Have you ever dreaded a leisurely activity that you eagerly planned days or weeks in advance? I first caught myself doing this a few years ago when I was driving home to Turkey. I was looking forward to meeting old friends. But to my surprise, as the date approached, I began to be reluctant and unenthusiastic about these long-awaited reunions.
This post was originally published in The Conversation .
“I need to go have lunch with my friend,” I grumbled to the others, which sounded like a chore.
Was I an anomaly? Or do other people think so too? We increasingly rely on timetables to organize our lives : phone calls, meetings, dates and, yes, fun social events. But can leisure planning also start to feel like work? Why can they become a source of fear?
As a student of consumer behavior and decision-making, I decided to study this phenomenon with Gabby Tonietto, Ph.D. candidate in marketing. Under Tonietto’s direction (the results will eventually form part of her dissertation), we ran a series of studies to see if filling out our calendars – even with fun activities – could have unexpected side effects.
All work, no games?
In 13 studies , we found that simple scheduling makes other fun tasks more work-like. It also reduces how much we like them.
For example, in one of them, we asked participants to imagine how they get together with a friend over a cup of coffee. Half of the participants indicated that they had scheduled this meeting several days in advance and entered it on their calendar, while the other half were told that they decided to have coffee on the go. We found that this simple, relaxing activity was more associated with performance (duty, diligence, work) when planned than when improvised.
In several subsequent studies, we found that simply planning something fun – like a movie or a party – felt like work, even if it was something you did regularly, was new or special, or when you didn’t have there was nothing else planned for this day.
In another study, we opened a pop-up cafe on campus during final exams that served free coffee and cookies. We celebrated the students preparing for the finals and gave them one of two tickets. The first asked participants to select and schedule a time to take a break from their studies and enjoy free meals. The second simply told them that the cafe would be open for two hours.
After the participants came and drank coffee and cookies, we gave them a short questionnaire in which we asked how much they enjoyed the break. As expected, we found that those who planned the study break did not like it.
Schedule restrictions
So why can creating established plans be such a tedious task?
We think it has to do with how planning structures time. Scheduling is essentially about allocating time to action. The start and end points are set. However, such a strict schedule contradicts how people think about leisure and recreation, which are associated with unlimited freedom. As the saying goes, time flies when you’re having fun.
On the other hand, structured time is work-related: appointments start and end at specific times, deadlines are looming, and clocks are everywhere.
So when your weekend is structured and planned – even if the activities are fun – they start to take on some of the qualities we usually associate with work.
In another study, we asked participants to imagine that they had just decided to spend the day in a forest reserve doing various activities such as canoeing and guided hiking. We told half of the participants that they would just do two picnic sessions in between. The other half were told that they signed up for activities at a specific time (say 12:30 to 14:00) and had a picnic time in between. Almost all of the participants made spontaneous trips to the park and all were going to participate in similar events. The only difference was that some of the participants had a strict schedule while others did not.
We found that structuring not only made the exercise more work-like, but also reduced participants’ willingness to participate. In other words, even an impromptu entertainment experience begins to feel like work when structured.
Rough decision
But that doesn’t mean planning will take away all the fun. After all, you can’t do everything on the fly. For those who need to make plans several days or weeks in advance, what is called “rough planning” can work wonders.
Because planning can make weekend activities feel like work, we have found that relaxing the structure can alleviate some of these negative effects. To test this idea , we asked the students to either make an appointment for a specific time or indicate a gap on their day (“between lessons”). We found that removing certain boundaries not only increased the excitement, but also worked and also did something spontaneous.
So the next time you want to make a plan, make it flexible. You will feel less constrained and more likely to enjoy it.