I think a lot about time. Namely why I never seem to have enough of it.
I think about the things I do in the short term to waste time, like scrolling through news after work and watching chains of Youtube videos after dinner and lying in bed too long on weekend mornings. When these things start to become habits, that’s dangerous, because the amount of time they take away increases over a longer period and you lose even more of your time in these small chunks.
So, I’ve been trying to catch these habits and get rid of them before they do more damage.
I also think about things I spend time on that aren’t fun, useful, profitable, or even mandatory—I just kind of do them. If I spend three hours on a Saturday playing old PC adventure games from the ‘90s and have a lot of fun doing it, the time feels well-spent because I enjoyed myself and needed a break. But if I spend that same three hours going out for drinks with people I don’t like that much, it doesn’t feel like a good use of my time because the experience didn’t bring me anything positive and instead just left me tired, hungover, and short on cash. (Quick Clarification: Drinking with friends I care about is still fun.)
So, I’ve been trying to be more careful about what I choose to do and which invitations I say yes to.
I also think about bigger choices I make, like, HUGE long-term ones that involve taking on major obligations or orienting my life around certain kinds of Day Jobs that take up even bigger chunks of my time. These trade-offs almost always come with benefits (usually monetary ones), but they take up more of your time than anything else I’ve listed here, and they’re especially dangerous because you form routines around them. After a few weeks/months/years, these routines can start feeling so natural that you can’t imagine life without them—or imagine what you’d do with all your free time if you gave them up.
So, I’ve been thinking a lot about the larger commitments I take on so that the time-money-experience tradeoff works out more in my favor.
That’s…a lot of things to work on, and I’m starting to realize that if I can maximize my time in all these different ways, my life’s going to look very different than it did fifteen, ten, five, or even one year ago.
- It means I’m not going to be lying around scrolling through my phone or surfing Wikipedia, because these things aren’t fulfilling.
- It means I’m not going to go to events I’m not interested in or spend time with people I don’t like, because these things aren’t fulfilling either.
- It also means I’m not going to have a typical Day Job where I spend forty hours a week doing work I’m not interested in just to keep the bills paid.
When you spell it all out like that, life feels a lot…different, and a part of me feels sad that things have to/had to change from the same (relatively) carefree life I lived when I was in my twenties.
Maybe that’s just me waxing nostalgic, but it’s hard to say goodbye to the way things were.
…at least, until I look at the things I want to do and the life I really want to live and realize a lot of that stuff I used to do doesn’t have a place in the life I want anymore. Instead, there’s a lot of new stuff I’d rather be doing.
That doesn’t mean everything I ever cared about has to get thrown away—just the stuff I’ve outgrown because it doesn’t feel meaningful anymore.
This is what it means to plan your life the way you want to be living it.
And if I can do it, you definitely can too.
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Ian – nice reflective post. I will tell you my age-ed and wizened philosophy: Be constantly in a state of improvement. So what does that mean? To me it means to do something, at least one thing, sometimes dozens of things, each day that are improvements to your quality of life or your pursuits or interests. Feeding the animals, as I call it, involves the day-to-day tasks like eating and washing clothes and making beds. Those all need to be done and should be done well, but I mean to be selective with choosing one or two or three (I shoot for three) things each day that compounded over time will have a major impact on your life direction. Imagine if you did three improvements or developments each day! That would be 1000 steps by year’s end. So, for example, today involves continuing my studies of Python, connecting in a meaningful way with a new person I am seeing, and getting an order put in for lumber for a project for the coffee shop. Those are new steps that are outside of the routine. I may add a few more. Some days I unfortunately only achieve one or two. Some days I achieve dozens of incremental improvements. But each day I do something. So the rest of the day is allowed to be what it is and how it unfolds around me. The world I have chosen to live in, the world I have created, the people I associate with, the foods I eat, etc. are all products of these steps taken each day. By accomplishing these improvements, I feel much better about the mundane nature of some of the tasks I face each day. I do cook for myself each day. I do make my bed each day. I do try to clean up a certain part of my life or my finances or my businesses or my building each day – think maintenance. This is all feeding the animals. Keeping life on a solid footing, not allowing for chaos to emerge. And it is a full life.
I find myself seeking some new direction lately and a new path is revealing itself to me as I work on steps forward each day. I have a general idea of the shape of the mountains ahead. They get clearer as I approach.
d