I have a lot of life giving activities that I do but I wouldn't call any of them relaxing. Learning to code, learning a new song on the piano, playing soccer, teaching my kids new things, mediating, all make me feel great but require high amounts of mental focus. I love doing theses things and getting in states of flow and feel great afterwards. But inevitably I reach a point of my day where my mind is exhausted and I'm bored and just want to "relax". This usually leads to scrolling stacker.news/reddit and/or watching dumb videos on youtube. It does seem to relax me in the moment but afterwards I feel down.
So my question is what to do in these moments of mental exhaustion, how to relax? Is life about finding the mental strength to always be doing something productive, trying to be in the flow state as much as possible? Or are there things we can do that don't require a lot of brainpower and active thought to "unwind" and "relax" in a healthy manner?