Play as Work is Good for You

Snowboarding isn’t just fun–it’s good for you.

In his column of July 18, 2006, “Farming? Running? It Doesn’t Sound Like a Vacation to Me,” the Wall Street Journal’s Jared Sandberg talks about what makes for a good vacation. He quotes, among other people, Geoff Godbey, a professor of leisure studies at Pennsylvania State University. It turns out that what we do with our non-work time is important to who we are:

To be most satisfying, Prof. Godbey explains, leisure should resemble the best aspects of work: challenges, skills and important relationships. Leisure has its hierarchy. At the lowest level, it’s a search for diversion, higher up it’s a search for pleasure and, at the top, it’s a search for meaning. “It’s not that diversion is bad,” says the professor, “but in terms of human growth, it’s inferior to activities that are more pleasurable — and they’re inferior to activities that are more meaningful.”

Scientific evidence, he notes, shows that people who engage in skill-oriented leisure — crossword puzzles, bridge, chess, woodworking — score higher on practical intelligence tests. “Leisure is a very important medium for making us stupider or more intelligent,” he says. “At the end of your life what you’ve done with your leisure may be more important than what you’ve done at work.”

So maybe that explains why some people find a spiritual aspect to snowboarding.

And if a professorship of leisure studies isn’t a sign of the wealth in our society, what is?

Carol Hymowitz takes up a similar theme in her August 14 column, “Executives Who Make
Their Leisure Time Inspiring and Useful.” She quotes a CEO who is learning Spanish in his off-work hours.

He says of his language learning: “There was something very inspiring about tackling a new skill — and being able to chart my progress … up the learning curve each day.”

Sounds like he’s tried snowboarding, too!