As a researcher, a good chunk of my work is literally just sitting on my ass and thinking. Or thinking while taking a walk in the park, or thinking while mindlessly chopping wood in a video game. Now with a kid, it’s kind of switched to thinking about what to do for dinner, how I can get the chores done for the day or how to organize my time so that I can fit in a few hours of work. It’s work in the sense that it’s something that needs to be done and it has an energy cost to doing. It’s also not really something you can turn off even if you wanted to.