7 pastimes perfect for people who feel drained and unmotivated in life

Let’s be real: life can drain you.

Sometimes, for no obvious reason, getting through the day feels like wading through molasses. Motivation is MIA, and even the things you used to enjoy feel like background noise. I’ve been there.

What helped? Finding low-pressure pastimes that gently woke me up again—mentally, emotionally, creatively. Not overnight, but enough to shift things.

Here are 7 pastimes that are surprisingly powerful when you're feeling like a half-battery human.

These aren’t fixes. They're small reboots.

1. Taking long walks with no destination

Not a hike. Not a workout. Just walking for the sake of it.

One thing I learned while living in Tokyo for a summer was that walking without a plan resets your brain in weirdly helpful ways. Wandering the side streets with no goal gave me space to think—without trying to think.

That’s the trick: when your energy’s shot, you don’t need another goal. You need movement without pressure.

Studies have shown that walking increases creative output by up to 60%. But I’ve found the real benefit is emotional. You start to notice things again—your neighborhood, your breath, the light.

And that’s where motivation begins: noticing again.

2. Playing with analog creativity

There’s something about using your hands that settles a noisy mind.

When I’m fried, I mess around with film photography. Not to shoot anything serious—just to play with light, textures, shadows. No edits, no likes, no pressure.

Maybe for you it’s drawing, pottery, collaging old magazines, baking bread, or knitting a crooked scarf.

Analog invites slowness. There’s a rhythm, a physicality, a beginning and an end. Unlike the infinite scroll.

When your energy is shot, digital spaces can feel like a thousand tiny demands. A pencil, a lump of clay, a mixing bowl—each one asks for just one thing at a time.

Here’s my rule: start badly. Make an ugly sketch. Misfire an exposure. Knead lumpy dough. The point isn’t perfection; it’s feeling the texture of doing.

Your brain loves completion. Shape something with your hands and watch it go from nothing to something. That small sense of progress is often the first spark back.

3. Learning something irrelevant to your job

When I was deep in burnout a couple years ago, the last thing I wanted was another productivity hack. What actually helped? Watching YouTube videos on mushroom foraging.

It was random. It had nothing to do with my work. But it sparked curiosity.

That small flicker led me to other rabbit holes: ethical hacking, lucid dreaming, Norse mythology.

Curiosity is underrated medicine. It’s lighter than purpose, easier than goals. It reminds you what it’s like to want to learn again.

Pick a topic you know nothing about and explore it. No agenda. No monetizing. Just for the joy of learning.

4. Caring for plants or sourdough

As weird as it sounds, watching something grow can remind you how healing actually works.

I started a sourdough starter during lockdown like half the internet. What surprised me was how satisfying it was to tend to something that needed time. Not effort. Just patience.

Same with my indoor plants. When I was in a rut, I didn’t have much energy to give. But checking on my snake plant once a week? Watering it slowly? I could do that.

There’s a reason therapeutic horticulture exists. As noted by Sue Stuart-Smith, author of The Well-Gardened Mind, gardening and plant care reconnect us to rhythms that are slower and more forgiving than the modern world.

You’re not just nurturing a plant. You’re practicing gentleness. With yourself.

5. Making playlists for different moods

Sounds basic, but hear me out.

Music has this way of reaching places that language can’t touch. When I feel like a shell of a person, curating a playlist feels manageable. It’s creative without being performative.

One week, I’ll make a playlist called “Feels like floating.” Another week, it’s “Crawl out of the cave.” I let the titles be weird, honest, even funny.

It’s a low-stakes form of self-expression. You get to say, this is where I’m at, without needing to explain.

And more than that—it reminds you that songs aren’t just sounds. They carry memory, emotion, and attention all at once.

Making a playlist isn’t just scrolling through tracks. It’s a way of telling your own story.

6. Journaling—but only through lists

If journaling sounds like too much, try this instead: make lists.

List what you’re tired of. What you miss. What you want to try. What you need less of.

No pressure to be poetic. Just empty the clutter onto paper.

I’ve done this at times when I couldn’t hold a thought for more than five seconds. Lists gave structure to the noise.

Rudá Iandê, in his book Laughing in the Face of Chaos, reminded me that “we live immersed in an ocean of stories, from the collective narratives that shape our societies to the personal tales that define our sense of self.”

Writing lists helped me see which stories I was stuck in—and which ones I might be ready to leave behind.

The book also inspired me to stop fighting myself. To stop pretending I was “fine.” That honesty opened up space to actually feel different.

7. Watching films that don’t fix things

Sometimes the most healing thing is a movie that doesn't tie everything up with a bow.

A few weeks ago, I rewatched Lost in Translation on a low-energy weekend. It doesn’t resolve everything. There’s no big transformation. Just two people trying to find meaning in small moments.

It reminded me that we don’t always need solutions. Sometimes we need to see that other people are wandering too.

If you’re feeling drained, seek out slow cinema. Indie films. Foreign dramas. Documentaries about beekeeping or desert life or someone building a house alone in the woods.

Stories that make space for quiet, complexity, or even boredom.

Sometimes, witnessing someone else’s slowness gives you permission to embrace your own.

The bottom line

Feeling drained doesn’t always mean something’s wrong with you.

Sometimes it means your mind and body are begging for stillness. Not stillness as in doing nothing. But pastimes that don’t ask you to perform, produce, or push.

Each of the seven pastimes above helped me in different seasons. Not by “fixing” me, but by reconnecting me to parts of myself I had forgotten.

And as Rudá Iandê writes, “When we stop resisting ourselves, we become whole. And in that wholeness, we discover a reservoir of strength, creativity, and resilience we never knew we had.”

If that’s not motivation enough, I don’t know what is.

Try one of these pastimes this week. Not to become better—just to feel more like you.