The Germans are in their spare time preferably at home and often on my cell phone. This was the rather depressing result of the Leisure Time Monitor 2023. Sinking into your cell phone at home doesn't make you happy. On the contrary: spending time with your smartphone can promote depression and also seduces people into it, to work more. After all, Instagram (free time) and Outlook (50 new work emails!) are just a finger's breadth apart on most cell phones. Seven tips on how to make your free time more meaningful.

1. Handy weg

The biggest problem with smartphones is that they eat into our already limited free time: The device itself reveals exactly how much when you search for daily or weekly screen time in the settings. However, very few people actively decide to spend so much spending free time on your phone. It just happens. 

This is what it can look like: You actually just wanted to check the weather for the weekend and twenty minutes later you look up and don't even remember why you picked up your cell phone in the first place. 

Of course, the smartphone can be a necessary tool for organizing your free time, for example because you can look up the way to the campsite or google a good restaurant. But once you've arrived at your destination, the device should disappear into your pocket - otherwise you might as well stay at home. 

The author Catherine Price, who wrote the bestseller with the self-explanatory title How to break up with your phone recommends, for example, introducing a "digital sabbath", i.e. a period free of cell phones and computers. With her family often took 24-hour smartphone breaks at the weekend: "Without the distraction of apps, we suddenly had more free hours at our disposal - hours that we could use for things we really enjoyed," writes the author. 

Beginner's tip: Even if you just leave your smartphone at home for an afternoon or an evening, you will notice the effects. Instead of scanning messages while rocking behind your child's back, you might get to know other parents. Or while the evening companion goes to the toilet, you can talk to the bar owner instead of staring at your cell phone. Doesn't sound so bad, does it? 

2. customize expectations

Free time is limited, as the Leisure Time Monitor report clearly shows: According to the study, the average time available for relaxation has decreased from 4.19 hours to 3.55 hours per day since 2020. Pensioners (4.54 hours per day) still have the most free time, while parents (3.00 hours) have particularly little. This is not only an average value, but also a fallacy: most people do not have two hours free at a time in which they can watch a movie or finish reading a book in peace. Free time often breaks down into what author Teresa Bücker calls Time confetti describes: It's sometimes five minutes here before your daughter's ballet class ends, or a quarter of an hour between the office and the networking dinner in the evening. That's why you should be realistic: You can't train for a half marathon or learn the Python programming language in 25 five-minute units. 

If you realize, for example at the beginning of the week, how much free time really is available, you can think more carefully about how you use this time. It can help to write down free time in the calendar just like work appointments 

3. Courage for leisure

With the entry in the calendar, however, the similarities with working hours should already end. After all, free time is pretty much the exact opposite of working time. Free time is characterized, among other things, by the fact that nobody tells you what to do. Unlike time with the family (the child wants ice cream, the paediatrician has to vaccinate) or time at work (the colleague wants lunch, the customer wants "urgent feedback"): in our free time, we are, well, free! 

Most people, however, seem to find it difficult to free themselves from ambition. Studies show that many people are no less ambitious in their free time than they are at work. People want do as many activities with as many results as possible - both during working hours and in your free time. Two American scientists came to this conclusion in a study on time management.

The publicist and Buddhist Sylvia Wetzel calls this "unhealthy ambition". "Behind ambition is the greed for honor, for status, for being loved and seen," she says. Unhealthy ambition stands in contrast to the desire to "do something well". However, many people find it difficult to say what they actually want to "do well" of their own accord. In order to feel what deep down demands attention, you first have to create space for yourself again that isn't taken up with activities. Wetzel advises more "courage for leisure". 

Idle time, i.e. simply doing nothing, can be an act of resistance says philosophy professor Alexander Prescott-Couch in an interview with ZEIT MAGAZIN. "Many people run after their careers, in their free time they work hard on their bodies and their education. The idler says: I'm not going to do that. That has charm." 

4. Leave gaps

If you are not yet brave enough to simply do nothing in your free time, you have other options. Because even that "Leaving gaps between appointments and activities" has a big impact on the enjoyment of free time, according to studies. If you also tend to overstretch the hours of a free afternoon with too many appointments (so first to a massage, then to the second-hand store because it's so rarely open and later to meet two friends who don't even know each other for ice cream), you can expect stress to arise at one point or another during the afternoon. 

"You are constantly looking at your watch and have the feeling that you have far too little time to enjoy what you are doing," explains Selin Malkoc, co-author of the time management study. For example, experiments have shown that test subjects enjoy a massage less if they have an appointment with friends directly afterwards. The researchers therefore recommend never planning two leisure activities directly after each other. The good news: even short breaks of five or ten minutes are worthwhile, because the recovery effect is greatest at the beginning of a break. 

5. Find out what's really fun

Many people claim that they enjoy reading or going to the theater. This may be true for some. However, it may well be that it's something you think you should enjoy. Author Catherine Price, who has written a book not only about cell phones but also about "real" fun, calls these activities, which often involve consumption and entertainment (i.e. massages, movies, manicures) "fake fun". 

Real fun, on the other hand, is when you are completely absorbed in the moment, forget about time, feel good and full of energy. As a scientist, she has defined three characteristics for this: play, connectedness and flow. play Price describes it as the state of doing something with ease, without caring about the result. connectedness would arise with other people, whether known or strangers. But you can also feel connected to nature or your own body, she writes in her book. The term flow comes from psychology and describes the state when you are so absorbed in an activity that you forget the time. Distraction (for example by cell phone) prevents this state.

For Price, the personal fun awakening experience was guitar lessons with a group of strangers. For others, that feeling can come from playing cards, sledding or jumping on a trampoline. 

What real fun means is very individual. To find out what that is, you can ask yourself the question: When was the last time I really had fun? If you can't think of an answer straight away, don't worry. The author of the book felt the same way the first time. The great thing is: the more you pay attention to when you're having fun, the more aware you become of such situations - and almost automatically have more fun.

6. Surround yourself with fun magnets

If you have found out in which situations and with which people you particularly often have fun (i.e. burst into fits of laughter, do unusual things, lose track of time), then make sure that you spend more time with these people. It doesn't always have to be your best friends. Sometimes a very specific colleague, the nice kiosk vendor or a friend who walks your dog can bring more fun into your life. This in turn can be a good indication of which activities you should prioritize in your free time. After all, you can also meet that funny colleague outside the office.

But not only people can be fun magnets, as author Ingrid Fetell Lee shows. When she spoke to people about fun for her book Joyful certain things were mentioned again and again: Rainbows, campfires, swimming pools and tree houses, for example. Activities that were mentioned disproportionately often can also be identified: Flying kites, paragliding, camping or gardening. For others, it may be dancing or cooking. Find out for yourself - and do it as often as you can. And leave the cell phone at home. 

7. Embrace the moment

Assuming all six points did not work. So you're lying on the massage chair right now, already thinking about the next meeting. And there's nothing you'd rather do than take a quick look at your cell phone to see if your girlfriend might be able to meet you fifteen minutes later. Let go of your thoughts about your cell phone and your girlfriend (she will be waiting for you) - and be happy that you are where you are: on the massage chair. And take a deep breath. 

Mindfulness exercises are equally simple and yet not easy for most people. If you find it difficult to concentrate on your breathing, you can focus instead on sounds (the subway passing by, children crying in the distance, the birds) or open your eyes (the leaves that reveal a view of the sky, the slightly dried grass, the fabric of your jeans). Mindfulness meditation has a positive effect on chronic pain, depression and stress, as has been scientifically proven. In your free time, it can at least be a means of becoming more aware of and enjoying the moment - however brief it may be. After all, mindfulness can be practised perfectly in very short time confetti units.