Scheduling a leisure activity like seeing a movie or taking a coffee break can lead people to actually enjoy the event less than if the same activities were unplanned, a new study has found.
However, roughly planning an event, but not giving a specific time, can lead to similar levels of enjoyment as unplanned events, researchers found.
“People associate schedules with work. We want our leisure time to be free-flowing,” said Selin Malkoc, assistant professor at The Ohio State University in the US.
“Time is supposed to fly when you are having fun. Anything that limits and constrains our leisure chips away at the enjoyment,” said Malkoc.
Malkoc and Gabriela Tonietto, a doctoral student at Washington University in the US, analysed 13 separate studies that looked at how scheduling leisure activities affects the way we think about and experience them. In one study, college students were given a calendar filled with classes and extracurricular activities and asked to imagine that this was their actual schedule for the week.
Half of the participants were then asked to make plans to get frozen yogurt with a friend two days in advance and add the activity to their calendar. The other half imagined running into a friend and deciding to get frozen yogurt immediately.
Results showed that those who scheduled getting frozen yogurt with their friend rated the activity as feeling more like a “commitment” and “chore” than those who imagined the impromptu get-together.