As the year winds down, many of us find ourselves in this quiet in-between time, wedged between Christmas Day and New Year’s Day. That little sandwich of calm is felt more keenly than ever this year, with many back in strict lockdowns again. Real life goes into suspended animation: we have a dose of downtime.

The question is: how to fill it?

One of my annual traditions is the Christmas holiday learning project. Trying to learn or improve a skill when I have the time and space to do it has become a fun challenge and a geekish treat. Sometimes the focus is language learning; often it is something computerish. In fact, teaching myself how to develop Flash games (a good twenty years ago now!) eventually led to a whole new career in educational software.

Mental Block

This Christmas, I had a particular new skill in my sights to delight my inner (and outer) nerd: C# and Unity, the games development platform. It’s important not to fall behind in a fast-changing profession, and Unity is everywhere in mobile gaming at the moment. Surely there is huge untapped potential for language learning applications there?

Somehow, though, there was a missing piece. My brain knew it; every time I settled down to do a tutorial or two, I’d feel sluggish and lacking in concentration. What was wrong?

I’d forgotten the true meaning of downtime: restoration.

This isn’t just about doing nothing. Downtime needn’t be aimless, results-free rest time. It can be a time for motivation and realignment of your goals, too.

Things just come to you when you pause, you see. Plans, dreams, hopes, old and new. Escaping the four walls and going for long walks along the sea, for example, I’ve found myself staring at the ships moored off the coast, looking them up on a marine tracker website and marvelling at the places they are coming from and going to. It’s recalibrated my sights on Iceland and Norway, and filled me with a renewed enthusiasm to take those languages forward in 2021.

Downtime Abbey

All this is not to say we should simply down tools, lie down and daydream away this quiet time. As language enthusiasts, we worship at the temple of self-improvement, and it would be masochistic to deny ourselves the joy of it. Knuckle down, power forward and level up. It’s what we do.

But I’ll be fitting in lots of pondering, thoughtful walks as well as Christmas telly and stuffing leftovers this year, too. Give yourself a little replenishing downtime as well. Your next big adventure might be swirling around in there, waiting to emerge, fully formed, from a well-rested mind.