WORDS LAURA POTTER
For years, keen runners, cyclists and triathletes have tracked their training sessions with heart rate monitors and stopwatches, so it’s no wonder they’ve embraced the likes of Strava, which turns the mundane commute into a fun competition. What’s more surprising is that this competitive approach now sees us measuring and comparing everything from reading to meditating. ‘We’re so used to measuring performance that we’re struggling to let go of that in our spare time,’ says Sandi Mann, senior psychology lecturer and author of The Upside of Downtime: Why Boredom is Good (Little Brown, £13.99). ‘It’s like we’ve forgotten that it’s valid to just enjoy something for the sake of enjoyment.’