How to Refresh

At this time of year, when it is becoming harder and harder to find a nicely warm, sunny day to go outside for a walk, it’s important to keep in mind all of our various options to mentally refresh, after cognitively exhausting ourselves, doing work that requires mental focus, for example.

As discussed in this article, whomever we are we are mentally refreshed, for example, via:

• Nature views—particularly when that nature includes green plants, trees, and gently curving paths of the sort we might find in a British or North American meadow on a lovely spring day. These views should seem readily accessible, not separated from us by a hedge, for example, and can even include a few scattered human elements, such as a boat in the distance, and a tree we could scamper up, or some other way to avoid any danger that might approach.

• Art that depicts the same sort of nature views that revitalize us, whether it is a painting or photograph or a sculpture, still or moving, realistic or reduced to its fractal dimensions, is just as refreshing as a nature view.

• Green leafy plants inside buildings.

• Water features (with slow peacefully flowing water), inside or on view outside

• Glare-free natural light

• Wood grain

There are other routes to mental refreshment, at least some people will be revitalized cognitively by:

• Creative activities – whether that’s embroidery, painting, writing poetry, or just puttering around with clay, for instance

• Socializing with other people

• Exercising, with a personally comfortable level of effort

• Eating something nutritious

Some things refresh all of us all of the time, others are revitalizing for some people some of the time—but homes and workplaces and hotels and wherever else we spend time need to make it likely that we have access to options for overcoming mental exhaustion.