Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about time spent. As I approach my thirties I’m thinking a lot about what progress I want to make and where. It can’t be overstated enough that in today’s society it is difficult to find yourself without something to do.
I think often back to a video I watched in which the author, who may have been Clark Kegley, talks about a thought experiment. Think about your life and where you want it to be in 5 years time. What do you want accomplished, projects completed, things acquired/learned, etc. Now think about what your life has looked like for the past 90 days. If you were to continue to repeat those past 90 days for the next 5 years would you end up in the same place that you envisioned?
Time is countable and fleeting
There is an entire argument to be made about if this is even the right way to look at life. You don’t want to gamify your life to the point where you’re constantly stressed about if you are doing enough. I think if you are prone to that then there’s probably other things to work on rather than just your goals and maybe a therapist would be useful in that case. But if you can escape that anxiety and overthinking then I think this is a useful framing to use from time to time.
At the end of the day time on this earth is long but it feels short. Or at least that’s my current take on the situation maybe I’ll change my mind when I’m 90. The time we have to do what we want is very much countable. It’s sad but I think it’s something that we should think and talk about more. If we don’t then when it slips through our fingertips it will only feel all the more scarier. Better to be aware and cognizant than to be blissfully ignorant. But that’s just me.
Fixing time sinks
I think I’ve wasting time in a few places lately. I’ve been letting silly social media apps get the best of my time and then feeling exhausted during the rest of my free time. But I’ve been taking active stands towards using alternative readers that help reduce the “dopamine drip”. For reddit I use a personalized Redlib instance that only has relevant and useful content. I have something similar for Youtube through an Invidious instance. Instagram I only use the Safari site for messaging and the explore page seems to be broken whether due to one of my extensions or Meta trying to encourage users to switch to the app which works in my favor.
I’ve also been doing a poor job of managing my food and activity schedules. I eat when I get hungry AND am not busy. The gym is usually reserved for the end of the night. Food for me is an ongoing experiment of figuring out what works for me. Unfortunately I recently acquired a smoker so I haven’t been eating the most healthy choices of proteins. As for exercise I’ve been dealing with some injuries lately as well as new goals which have led me to want to run an experiment. I plan on breaking up my workouts into what some gym rats call “two-a-days”. Traditionally these would be two full workouts at separate times during the day. Two separate full workout sessions. For me it’s just going to be what could be one workout but split into two sessions.
My hope is that this two-a-day plan will give a couple of benefits:
- Give me structured breaks in my calendar that is personal time but not such a long block that it has to happen outside of work hours.
- Allows for more success in the gym because I will only have a few exercises each session rather than a long session where I am ready to be home by the time I get to the last exercises.
- Possible energy boosts afterwards due to dopamine/serotonin/endorphins or whatever other good stuff working out gives you.
Sleep is a big decider in energy for the day. I haven’t necessarily cracked my sleep code but I have found the 80% of things I need to get right:
- Consistent bed time and wake up time
- Planning things out so that I don’t have to sacrifice sleep. Remember the smoker from earlier? Staying up until midnight to take off the pork shoulder I’m cooking can throw off my next two days.
- Limit naps to 20 minutes unless I was unable to get adequate sleep
- Taking magnesium and using an eye mask to stay asleep for longer (also limiting water intake before bed)
Where do I want to spend my time?
This is what I’ve struggled with a lot. I want to
- Read books that scare me like SICP
- Start a side hustle
- Become better at my hobbies more like meditation, photography, and homelabbing
- Meet more people and continue stretching my social wings
- Grow and strengthen relationships I already have
- Expand my skills for my career and prepare for whatever step is next in my work life
- Travel to more places and see lots of things while I’m healthy and able
Honestly that list was just a laundry list but it felt good to write out. Maybe something for you, reader, to go and do for yourself. After doing that I think I can see some patterns. I think I could split traveling out to once a month. Give certain hobby practices to specific days. For practices like meditation and reading I can add focused time into each day. For social life I can work on building that into my environment like going to a coffee shop on Sundays to work on editing my photos from the week.
While this may be more of a long form Bluesky post rather than a blog I think this was a good first step in laying out the road I want to walk down. I’ll check back in 90 days to see if I’ve been making any good progress.