What to do with the evening

An evening with the passenger put down is an evening with a space in it, and if nothing goes in the space, the passenger comes back to fill it. This chapter is about what goes in. It's short, because you know what you like, and because the earlier books on the phone and on boredom have covered the two things people reach for by default.

Sonnentag and Fritz's four recovery experiences are a useful list. Relaxation is the obvious one, and it means what it says, something that lowers the body's idle speed. A bath, a walk, music, a book that isn't about anything. Mastery is the surprising one. It's doing something you're getting better at, an instrument, a language, a run that's a bit longer than last week's, a recipe that's slightly beyond you. It doesn't sound restful, and it works, I'd guess because a head that's learning has no room for the audit. Control is choosing how the time goes, rather than having it go, and it's why an evening that was decided at six feels different from one that happened.

Fritz and Sonnentag's weekend study adds a fourth thing, which is people. Low social activity at the weekend predicted burnout after it. An evening with someone in it, a conversation, a meal at a table with faces at it, a phone call to a friend, is an evening the passenger finds hard to ride along in. It's also, not by accident, the evening the people at home were hoping for.

What I'd avoid as the default is the phone and the television with nothing chosen. Not because they're bad, but because they're the passenger's favourite seats. The phone has the inbox in it, one tap away, and chapter 11 said what the tap does. The television with nothing chosen leaves the head free to run the rerun in front of it, which is how you came to stare at a page that was the spreadsheet. The earlier books The phone can wait and Bored is fine cover both. A programme chosen on purpose and watched with someone is a fine evening. The next episode starting by itself while you're at the desk is not.

There's one more thing the evening can hold, and it's the thing the passenger was standing in for. Chapter 2 said the passenger is company, that an empty head can feel worse than a busy one. That's true, and the answer isn't to make the head empty. It's to give it something that isn't work. The evening you had before the passenger took it, whatever that was, is still available, and it's the thing this book is for.