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My wife has terrible taste in app games.

I say that with complete love and zero remorse, because one evening last week I caught her sitting on the couch, completely absorbed in one of the most delightfully ridiculous things an adult can do. She was playing a game on her phone called Find the Cat. You get a simple, cheerful illustration… think a Parisian street scene with the Eiffel Tower in the background, and hidden somewhere among the buildings and cobblestones are roughly thirty tiny cartoon kitties. Your job is to find them. That's the game. She looked so genuinely content sitting there that I did what any reasonable person would do. I asked her the name of the app so that I could download it.

Every level is a different theme and you can work toward earning different kitties, like ninjas. I’m currently settled in France and working toward Whiskers de Paris.

When I started playing the other night, my shoulders were somewhere around my ears and then they were somewhere around my normal body by the time I stopped.

We've been sold a very specific idea of what relaxation is supposed to look like. It's supposed to be intentional and structured and probably involve an app that tracks your progress and sends you a notification when you've been sufficiently calm. It's supposed to produce results. It's supposed to be optimized.

Find the Cat is none of those things. It is completely, gloriously pointless. And somehow that's exactly why it works.

This week we're talking about simple pleasures, why uncomplicated, unoptimized, a little bit silly enjoyment might be the most restorative thing you're not letting yourself have.

Let's talk about why doing something delightfully pointless is actually really good for you.

We turned rest into another job, and it's exhausting.

Somewhere along the way, relaxation got optimized. We have sleep trackers that grade our rest and meditation apps with streaks to maintain and recovery scores that tell us whether we're allowed to feel rested. We've taken something that used to just happen and turned it into a performance with metrics. Research on what psychologists call leisure guilt shows that a significant number of people struggle to relax without feeling like they should be doing something productive instead. We've essentially broken our own off switch. All this optimization around rest is making us worse at actually resting.

Simple pleasures are more restorative than we give them credit for.

Research on positive emotion and wellbeing consistently shows that small, everyday pleasures have an outsized impact on mood and stress levels. We tend to overestimate how much we need big, exciting experiences to feel good and underestimate the power of quiet, simple enjoyment. Studies show that people who regularly engage in low effort, genuinely enjoyable activities report lower stress, better mood, and higher life satisfaction than people who are always chasing the next big thing. Finding a hidden cat in a cheerful little illustration counts. Turns out the bar for what's good for you is lower than you think.

Your brain loves a little gentle focus.

There's a sweet spot between doing nothing and doing something demanding, and that sweet spot is really good for your brain. Activities that require just enough attention to keep you present without taxing your cognitive resources, things like puzzles, coloring, simple games, and yes, finding illustrated cats, have been shown to reduce anxiety and quiet the mental noise that builds up over a busy day. It's the mental equivalent of a slow walk. Not a sprint. Not a nap. Just enough movement to shake the tension loose.

Joy doesn't require complexity.

We've been conditioned to believe that enjoyment has to be earned, sophisticated, or at least Instagram-worthy to count. Research on what psychologists call savoring shows that the ability to find genuine pleasure in simple, ordinary things is one of the strongest predictors of overall happiness and life satisfaction. The people who are best at being happy aren't the ones with the most exciting lives. They're the ones who've stayed good at noticing and appreciating the small stuff. A hidden cat. A warm evening on the couch. A wife who was right and gracious enough not to make it a whole thing.

This week, find your version of Find the Cat. Something simple, a little silly, and completely unoptimized. Here's how to get there.

1. Give yourself permission to do something pointless.

Not productive. Not improving. Not optimized. Just enjoyable. Pick one thing this week that has no purpose beyond the fact that it feels good to do it, and do it without apologizing for it.

2. Notice what you've been dismissing as silly.

Is there something your spouse, your kid, or a friend keeps nudging you toward that you've been too serious to try? Find the Cat started as my wife's silly thing. Now it's our silly thing. Sometimes the things we dismiss are the things we need most.

3. Ditch the streak.

If your current relaxation routine has a streak, a score, or a notification attached to it, try one session without tracking it. Just do the thing for the sake of doing it. Notice if it feels different.

4. Find your sweet spot activity.

Think about activities that require just enough focus to keep you present without wearing you out. Puzzles. Doodling. A simple game. Gardening. Flipping through a magazine. Whatever gets you out of your head without demanding too much of it.

5. Let it be enough.

You don't have to turn your simple pleasure into a habit, a practice, or a personality. You don't have to tell anyone about it. You're allowed to just enjoy it quietly and let that be the whole point.

Permission slip for the week:

You are allowed to do something silly. You are allowed to find thirty cartoon cats in a Parisian street scene and feel genuinely pleased about it.

Reflection question:

What simple pleasure have you been dismissing as not serious enough? And what would it feel like to just let yourself enjoy it?

What's your Find the Cat? What simple, maybe slightly embarrassing little thing actually helps you relax?

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If this made you realize you've been making rest way too complicated, go find something delightfully pointless to do today. Then send this to someone who needs permission to enjoy something silly.

That's Volume 053. Here's to the simple things, the silly things, and the people in our lives who are patient enough to keep nudging us toward both until we finally listen.

Until next time: breathe deep, find the cat, and chill the duck out.

Jason

Research on leisure guilt shows many people struggle to relax without feeling they should be doing something productive instead. Studies on positive emotion consistently show that small everyday pleasures have an outsized impact on mood and stress levels. Research indicates people who regularly engage in low effort enjoyable activities report lower stress and higher life satisfaction. Studies on activities requiring mild focus show they reduce anxiety and quiet mental noise accumulated during busy days. Research on savoring shows the ability to find genuine pleasure in simple things is one of the strongest predictors of overall happiness and life satisfaction.