Think About This the Next Time You Plan a Golf Outing. Or Maybe, Not.
Think about this the next time you plan a golf date. Scheduling it makes it less fun. According to a new study, scheduling leisure time takes all the fun out of it. Planning events makes them seem like work, newswise.com reports. In a series of studies, researchers found that scheduling a leisure activity like seeing a movie or taking a coffee break led people to anticipate less enjoyment and actually enjoy the event less than if the same activities were unplanned. That doesn’t mean you can’t plan at all: The research showed that roughly planning an event (but not giving a specific time) led to similar levels of enjoyment as unplanned events. “People associate schedules with work. We want our leisure time to be free-flowing,” says Selin Malkoc , co-author of the study and assistant professor of marketing at The Ohio State University’s Fisher College of Business. “Time is supposed to fly when you’re having fun. Anything that limits and constrains our leisure ...