Leisure Is Not the Leftover.
What three summer books – and the words I carried to my grandmother’s funeral – taught me about making room for a life that matters.
We keep putting life on layaway
Finish the work. Clear the inbox. Handle one more problem. Then, when everything is finally under control, make time for the people and places that matter.
There is one problem with that deal: the work never ends.
This summer, I barreled through a ton of books (mostly audio while I’m plugging away). Three books kept pulling me back to the same question from different directions: What if leisure is not what remains after a productive life? What if it is one of the things that makes life worth living?
Arthur Brooks’s The Meaning of Your Life, Neil Pasricha’s The Happiness Equation, and Jennifer Wallace’s Never Enough gave me language for something I have felt for years. Then my grandmother’s funeral made the question personal.
When I and my siblings spoke in her honor at the service, a couple key themes played out: relationship-work she did to hold a special place with so many people throughout her life, her stubborn resolve, how the Depression formatively played a role through her (and our life upon “Clean Plate Club” standards), the roles of love for nature and our family “Camp” on a quiet lake and the beaches nearby to York, our senior trips abroad (mine to where they lived and the nearby sites in England, image below) and “Camp” and the games we played with her til the end – like cribbage.
Leisure is work we choose
Brooks describes leisure as the basis of culture. That does not mean doing nothing. It means doing the work we choose for ourselves, without an economic force standing behind it.
Time in nature. Learning or sharpening a skill nobody assigned. Making a meal. Sitting close enough to hear the full story. Building and tending relationships.
Real leisure takes time, effort, discipline, and structure. That is exactly why it matters. Workaholism offers the opposite bargain: more hours, more strain, and less distance between who we are and what we produce. The harder we chase happiness through work alone, the farther away it can feel.
The answer is not to become less serious about life. It is to become serious about the part of life that does not appear on a timesheet.
Make a quiet space
Pasricha makes the idea practical: create space. Delete access to yourself for a while. Lock the door. Close the window. Put the phone somewhere it cannot negotiate with you.
Every interaction takes time. The notes I took from his book point to David Meyer’s University of Michigan work on task switching, with an estimated efficiency cost of 20% to 40%. Our attention does not move for free.
Protect a holy hour with the same seriousness as the meeting you cannot miss. Use it to think, learn, recover, or stand and stare. Quiet is not hiding from life. It is how we return to it as ourselves.
Carl Jung put it this way: “The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.” We need enough silence to hear who that might be.
If you are in a situation and you don’t want know what, do nothing. Literally, you can sit there, go for a walk, meditate with some deep breaths; it can have a profound impact on you, even if it’s just for a few minutes.
Find a Third Place
Wallace writes about mattering as connection. We need to know other people value us and that we can add value to their lives. Proximity helps make that possible.
Sociologists call parks, libraries, pubs, cafes, trailheads, and other informal gathering spots “third places.” They are neither home nor work. They are where we become regulars, notice one another, open up, serve, and tend.
We shape those spaces. Then those spaces shape us.
That is the Third Place: the lodge, the corner booth, the friend’s backyard, the patch of grass where everyone somehow ends up. The adventure may be the excuse. The community is the point, along with the legend you may become there.
What my grandmother left me
At my grandmother’s funeral, the words I chose were not about output, efficiency, or a packed calendar. They were about a life and what remains in other people when that life ends.
In my speech, I made a comment about Maine being “Vacationland” where no one seemed to work aside from their own version of Down East Dickering. It helps that my grandparents were able to retire at 50 and became the hardest working retirees I’ve known. That said, they knew when it was time to wrap up the chores and sit down, pour one up, tell stories, enjoy a good meal, campfire and some quality leisure-time activities like hiking, fishing, frogging, four-wheeling, canoeing, games, gardening, sports, etc.
For me, I thanked Gram for the traits, memories (including the site of the family ghost story in England, hearing about the signs she was getting called above down the stretch), mindset and inspiration and said I looked forward to splitting the 1-1 tie we sat on in cribbage with her.
TNTC was officially formed right after my grandfather passed in 2015 (too early from Alzheimers as he, the former college QB, could still rope a spiral 50+ to me). It has served as a mission to team up, help and spend time with the right types of folks, and the 1st book came to help people find purpose. Both my grandfather and my grandmother were inspirations for starting Apres Leisure. They were grounded salt-of-the-earth folks but there was some special family lore told around the campfire. Leisure is not abstract. It is handed down through rituals, places, stories, and the ways people make room for one another.
Apres (technically “après” – we choose to make it a bit more approachable, sorry my French friends) is the moment after the effort: when the gear comes off, the noise drops, and the real living begins. You do not have to earn that moment by exhausting yourself first. I believe that “artifacts” can help queue that mindset – even if you’re stuck in tough spots in your first or second places (home and work). More to come on those in The Vault.
A different equation
Make a quiet space. Leave the house. Find your people. Learn something because it calls to you. Become a regular somewhere. Protect a ritual worth handing down.
The books gave me the framework. My grandmother gave it weight.
Leisure is not the leftover. It is where culture, connection, memory, and identity have room to form.
As we say:
The adventure changes. The feeling never does. Every day is Apres.
A question for you
What place, ritual, or person taught you how to make room for the part of life that does not appear on a timesheet?
Who do you transform to when you’re in your special third place(s)?
Stories, field notes, practical ways to commemorate legends and make leisure part of a good life.
Helps you get to results and your third place(s) quicker.
Source and review notes
- Arthur Brooks, The Meaning of Your Life – Chip’s summer reading notes.
- Neil Pasricha, The Happiness Equation – Chip’s summer reading notes.
- Jennifer Wallace, Never Enough / mattering notes – Chip’s summer reading notes.
