God, having fun is exhausting nowadays. Even if we’re not doin’ it for the ’gram, we should be smashing our PBs (personal bests) or ‘glowing up’. And why read one book when we could read the entire Booker longlist? The hobby has been replaced by the side hustle and even having a bath has been upscaled: it’s now ‘#selfcare’, and to make it count we should post an artfully shot picture of our legs. It’s all become distinctly competitive.

The drive to compete is primal – in numerous studies over the years, psychologists have found that happiness is not necessarily predicated on our successes, but on how our successes compare to those of others. The problem is, in a world where activity trackers like Fitbit and apps like Strava allow us to quantify every aspect of our free time – from steps walked to hours slept –competitiveness can become toxic, adding stress to any supposedly joyful activity.

Perhaps it’s understandable. In his 2018 book Idleness: A Philosophical Essay, Brian O’Connor argues we have been conditioned to believe that ‘at work’ is the natural state of man, and ‘at rest’ is a subversion of that state – and morally reprehensible. In our ‘time is money’, world doing, well, nothing becomes a double waste and, as O’Connor points out, a mark against our character. And so we turn everything into ‘work’.

How social media and productivity porn sucked the joy out of having fun