Category: Productivity

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I Have Tons of Time to Do What I Want – It’s All Relative Though

I often find myself lamenting that I don’t have more time for my hobbies or other non-work activities. Ironically, I find myself working harder and more often in an attempt to get myself to a financial place where I no longer need to work as much and have more time for hobbies.

It’s all relative, though.

To someone working two full-time jobs (or any parent), 15 minutes in a day is lots of free time.

The amount of free time I have is probably in the top 1% of employed people my age. And in addition to having the time at all, I also have an incredible amount of flexibility with it so that I can really make the most of it.

And that’s all amazing.

But it’s just funny how quickly we take for granted… Literally anything good.

I’ve found myself more and more envisioning a future where AI disrupts my industry to such an extent that I no longer have a livable income from my business. And I’ve realized just how much I take for granted.

And this is one of those things, specifically. Yes, I could have more free time. But like… Not that much more. And it’s not like having a little extra free time is going to drastically change my life.

I think I just need to be more efficient with the time I do have, and consider cutting some things out if I don’t feel like they are providing value to me.

So this is just a note to myself to be thankful for these things. Whether or not they last forever, they are still objectively good.

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I Want to Play More Guitar and Generally Shift my Time Focus

I’m just about done with my 3 week Asia trip, and I feel like my perspectives and priorities have changed a bit.

Most of the most rewarding experiences I had involved playing guitar or performing music (jamming with musicians in Kyoto, playing a guitar at a bar near Nagano, Karaoke in Tokyo and Taipei, playing Cajon in Taipei at open mic night). It made me realize I’d really like to invest lots of time into improving. I’d like to get really good.

And I’ve done just fine maintaining my business with an average of fewer than 2 hours per day spent on it. Which means I should have an incredible amount of free time on my hands.

I need to focus on practice and learning vs. just “being good”, because I think that will make it more fun and ultimately lead to better results.

I’m told that 3 hours per day is probably the most you should ever play and it will yield the best results. I don’t need to play that much every day but I might as well shoot for close to it. Maybe even just try it for a while and see how things change.

I might even buy a new acoustic guitar that’s a little more standard to play and go from there. My current ones are unusual.

I’ll focus on fundamentals and hopefully also start playing with people again. I think that would be fun. Maybe do open mic nights.

But I’d say that overall, I’ve had a bit of a mindset shift on how I spend my time. I got the impression while traveling that in these places there is far less of a focus on money and productivity, which is great. I’m realizing more and more that our system in the US is just sort of sick, and much of it has been imposed upon us by billionaires trying to create a culture of wage slaves to enrich themselves.

And I want no part of it.

Obviously, I have to plan for my future. And my job has only improved over time and paid me more, and I’m incredibly thankful for it.

But I need to realize that it’s a means to an end, and that I need to take a step back and really be honest about how I’m spending my time with it. I need to really focus on making it as efficient as possible and spend as little of my own time on it as possible so that it doesn’t interfere too much with the rest of my life.

And I also just need to review how I’m actually spending my time. I think I’m still wasting far too much time on silly activities like entertainment. I’m not being intentional enough.

Part of the problem is that I lack the energy to work on things that benefit me all the time. I may need to improve my sleep for that or figure out other things.

But I should also change how I view some of my activities. I should have times when I’m playing guitar just for fun and I don’t need to focus on learning or improvement. It can be low-energy and restorative. Just play songs I know if I’m lacking in energy.

Anyway, that’s what I hope to do going forward and I’m thankful for this trip that it helped me see that. Hopefully I won’t just slide backwards going forward.

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It’s Burnout… And Basically Everything Else

I’m only maybe 5 days into relaxing a bit since developing my theory that I’m essentially just burnt out and I’m feeling… Great.

I haven’t been super productive, though I have spent lots of time on the important things I need to do in my business and also have done tons of reading and playing guitar (which I’m enjoying much more).

Overall, I’m just feeling like how I should be feeling, I think. It’s great.

Obviously I don’t automatically feel great, but the floor is way higher, I enjoy things more, the brain fog is pretty much gone, and I have way more energy.

I randomly decided to go on a run today and my pace was for about an 8:38 mile, vs my most recent runs previously of 9:22 or more. And I felt good doing it. I felt light.

And really all I’ve done is relax a bit more and have some flexibility in what I get done.

Nothing else major has changed.

So I think really, this is it.

What’s funny is that the first post I randomly read today before writing this was one from March in which I specifically determine that I think I’m burnt out. I had forgotten about that entirely. It’s funny how things work out.

I eventually dismissed that idea at the time, because I realized my CPAP settings were not good and were definitely hurting me.

Which is probably true. And would make them the biggest contributor to my burnout.

You see, I think basically everything I’ve brought up here as an idea has contributed in one way or another to the burnout. Most of them affect how I sleep, rest, or otherwise recover. That’s why my sleep apnea has had a massive impact, and why when I was most burnt-out, I felt most like I did before it was treated.

So over time, I’ve slowly fixed and optimized so many parts of my life and I think those will continue to serve me well. And I might not have ever figured them out if I didn’t feel bad to start.

But now I feel like I can solve the overarching problem while reaping the benefits of everything else I learned.

I think that basically, I need to just pay attention to how I’m feeling. If I’m getting really stressed, I can’t just use that stress to power through for days at a time. I need to occasionally back off the workload and take some time to recover.

I may also need to figure something else out for my mornings. If I’m waking up past 8, going on a walk, studying, and reading for a while, then breakfast, THEN trying to do all of my important work tasks for the day AND workout all before lunch… It just won’t work.

So maybe I’ll plan to do emails and then just the ONE important work thing and work out, and then lunch. And then do the other work things afterwards.

And if things get crazy, I need to be open to working out after work.

But the important thing is to just monitor how I’m feeling and make adjustments as needed. I don’t want to get burnt out again. It’s not a good feeling.

I’m mostly just excited that I seem to have finally figured it out. It’s very encouraging, and I’m far more optimistic for the future now.

I think at my lowest point, I really started to give up hope that things would improve. I was feeling pretty hopeless.

But now it’s back! And I’m excited for the future again.

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Of an Abundance of Time

I swear I already wrote this post, but I think it might just be that I have a note to write it laying out and just never got around to it.

I’ve determined that it’s very important for me to feel like I have an abundance of time. The moment I feel like I don’t, I get anxious and unhappy.

Much of this connects to general anxiety and the rest mostly relates to something I’ve brought up before which is that “freedom” has historically been a value I subconsciously lived by. If anything at all impinges upon my freedom (in this case by taking up too much time) I start to get stressed because I’m no longer living up to my values.

This has caused me to resist beneficial routine and avoid committing to good things that would take a lot of time.

But at the same time, it’s not all bad. I think I’ve always understood the premise of this blog post at some level and – as a result – have typically not remained in a state where I have no free time for too long.

Over the last year, on average, I’ve improved my energy levels greatly and have also initiated two different acquisitions in my business. The result is that I have more work to do but am also capable of working more.

Some of that is great. But it can’t go on forever. I don’t want to immediately expend all of my new-found energy on work.

Instead, I need to consistently spend some of it on improvements to my business so I can outsource more of the work or make processes more efficient so I’m not doing as much.

As I gain more energy, I want to also feel like I have more freedom with my time to do whatever I want. I need to plan days and weeks where not much is going on.

Because at the end of the day I’m just much happier when I have that abundance mindset with regard to time.

 

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I Need to Redouble Efforts to Avoid Phone Time Wasters

I’ve let myself start to develop bad habits again with my phone. This time, it has mostly been Reddit. For whatever reason, I guess I decided again that it was important for me to be kept up-to-date on what’s happening in the world every single day.

There’s way more on Reddit than just current events, though, so of course things spiraled.

I’ve wasted so much time lately on that website. And the worst part about it is that not only does it just completely waste the time used to view it, but it also seems to sap me of my energy and make me less productive and happy beyond that.

So it’s got to stop.

I’m making it my main priority right now to avoid that completely. From now on, I plan to really just avoid scrolling Reddit completely. I also want to spend minimal time on YouTube, though that’s far more under control thanks to my Screen Zen app.

I think the importance of these things is implicit, and I’ve talked about them at length in the past, so I don’t need to rehash all that. I just want to document it here so that I can keep track of it and establish my resolve to really take it seriously.

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In All My Hobbies I’ve Opted to Nominally Do One Hard Thing – At the Expense of Fundamentals

I always hated “fundamentals”. I always wanted to just jump to doing the really difficult, impressive stuff so that I could prove I was good at something.

I remember with skateboarding, I always struggled with some core stuff, and instead of just perfecting each thing one at a time, I would spend all of my time trying to land – for example, a 360 flip. It’s a very difficult trick, and every so often – only from a standstill – I could land it.

It looked bad and I could never really get the hang of doing it consistently, but sometimes I could do it. And that made me feel like I was good at the sport.

I wasn’t though. I was just ignoring all the small pieces that were required to get good.

Or on the trampoline. I did get good at basic flips, but then I started doing backflips with a full 360 in them. Once again, it wasn’t pretty. But I could do it. And it impressed people and made me feel like I was really good at it.

And then guitar. I never practiced with a metronome, I didn’t learn any music theory, my rhythm was bad, and just so many of the fundamentals were totally foreign to me.

But I could play one of the more complicated Stevie Ray Vaughan licks. Not very well, obviously, but I could play the notes and I could do it quickly.

I think with all these things, there has been sort of a desperate thread to prove (to myself?) that I’m good at something. I skip steps to just get to the hard stuff because otherwise I feel like I’m just not that great.

And I also just get bogged down in the details of things and it feels overwhelming. I’d rather just go to something cooler and more showy.

I never put any of this together until just recently. The irony is that, in my quest to prove I was good at things, I neglected the very fundamentals which would have enabled my actual success.

It’s sort of frustrating looking back now and seeing how counter-productive it was. I should have drilled in the fundamentals and mastered them so that I could proceed from there with a good base.

Even now, I’m just realizing I do it with weight training, too. I’ve neglected all stretching and all core stability exercises. Instead, I’ve focused hard on obvious measures of success like my bench press numbers.

And then just the other day I injured my back again, ostensibly as a result of not building up core strength. In this case, I got burned by not building up a literal base of stability from which to expand my strength.

In work, I’d much rather take on major acquisitions than slowly build up my client base with strong business fundamentals.

So the question is: what do I do now?

The first step is obviously what I’m doing here: acknowledging the issue. Now that I’m actually aware of it, I can watch out for it going forward. I can pay attention and notice where it might be counter-productive.

I’m really going hard at the guitar again, and it’s important that I do things differently this time. I actually have been focusing a lot more on the fundamentals this time around, so perhaps I have already started to improve. But I do really need to dial that in and realize that being rock-solid on the basics will make the harder stuff way easier.

And I should obviously apply that elsewhere, to. Particularly with my business. I need to look for all the ways in which I’m neglecting some of the basics and really start to work on them. I already sense that there are tons of areas in which I need to improve.

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I Need to Totally Recalibrate How I View and Experience Things – Especially Being Alone

I’ve often mentioned here how I’d like to sort of get away from all social media and all silly entertainment, and I finally feel now like I’ve pretty much done that. YouTube had long since been the holdout, but I’ve been using the Screen Zen app and it has successfully gotten rid of the habit.

It’s not that I don’t ever use YouTube now, but the app basically just bugs me to get off it, and I do. So I went from averaging probably almost 2 hours per day on YouTube down to maybe 10 minutes per day. Which is great!

But I feel like a lot of wiring in my brain is being reworked.

I’ve been practicing a ton of guitar and reading a lot. And… Not much else, beyond work and normal, in-person socializing.

What I spend my time on has seen a massive shift away from mindless entertainment and far more onto productive practicing and reading in other languages. Both are things I’ve wanted to prioritize, and now I am.

But I think it necessitates a recalibration of many things. Some of this will happen naturally, and some I probably need to put some thought into.

Historically, almost any time I found myself home alone on a weekday (or worse: weekend), I found myself feeling very lonely and itching for some kind of distraction.

And I always found that distraction: mostly in mindless entertainment.

Over the years, any time I felt that tinge of restlessness or loneliness, I would just turn to YouTube or just watching movies or shows, and I could successfully ignore it.

But now I’m not doing that. The feeling is still there, but I’m channeling that energy into practicing things and reading.

Whereas in the past I never saw those as pleasurable activities, I feel like they are slowly becoming so as more and more time goes by and I get away from any social media or entertainment addiction.

I’ve heard a lot about “dopamine resets,” which may be largely nonsense as a concept. But while there may be no way to “reset” things in one go, I think that if I can avoid all of the mindless entertainment as an ongoing state that it will greatly increase my enjoyment of good, healthy things.

Since it’s all still kind of new, I don’t know for sure, but that certainly feels like how things are going.

So I’ll keep paying attention to that and see where it gets me.

I’ll also work on avoiding giving into any temptation when I feel that boredom or loneliness or… Whatever.

I think being bored is a gift. Maybe nothing productive or healthy sounds fun in a moment, and that’s okay. Maybe I should just be bored for once.

I don’t need to be stimulated every second of every day.

We’ll see how things go in the future, but I’m hopeful they will keep improving in this area.

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I think I Genuinely need 9+ Hours of Sleep For the Time Being

I slept 8 hours last night, and I can feel that I didn’t sleep enough and it has actually caused problems.

I’ve mostly been getting an actual 9 hours of sleep lately, and that’s been working pretty well for me. I’m just a little surprised to see that 1 hour less and I’m suffering the consequences.

My workout was incredibly disappointing. I’ve struggled all day to stay concentrated, especially as the day goes on. I feel tired and brain-foggy.

I think that what’s happening is that I’m still aggressively healing from my decades of sleep apnea, and my body has become used to the 9 hours I’m usually asleep and is fully utilizing that time to heal. If I don’t get the full amount, I’m going to suffer.

It’s also possible that I need much more sleep than most because my workouts have become increasingly intense, and it just takes a lot of time and energy to repair my muscles after each session.

But since I’m actively improving in many areas still, I have to assume it’s because I’m healing.

Regardless, it doesn’t make much sense to worry about it much until a year has passed and/or I stop improving.

I’m hoping that eventually, I’ll start feeling great with much less sleep. If I had a couple more hours each day to be productive, that would be tremendously beneficial in my life.

The purpose of this post, though, is just to establish that, for now, it’s really important that I sleep at least 9 hours. Whatever it takes to get that, I need to do. Otherwise I’m just setting myself up for failure in many ways.

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I Need to Think of Myself Like a Plant

This post is basically just a rehash of my post from a week or two ago, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot more and it really feels extremely relevant.

Basically, I need to think of myself like a plant.

What does that mean?

Plants don’t think or feel. They simply do their thing. Some are far more successful than others, and it’s all a combination of the right conditions that allow them to thrive.

And I’m realizing more and more that we are more or less the same.

We think we’re so smart and can will our way through anything, but at the end of the day our output is almost exactly correlated with our inputs.

None of my most productive days have ever come after a terrible night’s sleep, when I’m hungover, or when I’m sick. And more than likely nearly all of my best days have followed a period of sobriety, great sleep, and low stress.

It may feel in the moment like bursts of energy and creativity are totally spontaneous, but they aren’t at all. They come when all of your inputs are optimized and you’re feeling good as a result.

I honestly feel really silly for never realizing this before.

I once wrote that it’s arrogance to be too idealistic or optimistic about yourself or your abilities; especially regarding your willpower. While calling it “arrogant” feels like a bit of a judgement, the fact remains that thinking you can still be at your best even when you’re feeling terrible is simply false.

I feel like now that I have this understanding, I need to strive to maximize my inputs as much as possible. I need to get everything in place and do just about everything right on a consistent basis to maximize my output.

Throughout this blog I’ve spoken about weight training, and one thing that I like about it is that it provides objective feedback about how I’m doing. Whereas tracking a subjective measure of how I’m feeling may not always yield valuable results, the objective nature of weight training can’t be biased and is often far more useful.

I’ve started really focusing on giving myself the correct inputs to improve at weight training, and it has started to pay off. I’m rapidly approaching the strongest I’ve ever been. I can almost immediately tell that my efforts have paid off.

These results directly prove my idea. If I eat well (and enough), provide adequate rest and recovery, and don’t drink too much or otherwise sabotage myself, I can put in a great effort in each session and the next time I’ll be able to lift more.

It doesn’t really matter how much effort I’ve put in during the workout. At least not the “conscious” kind of effort requiring me to push myself uncomfortably hard.

If all the conditions are met, I will push myself the correct amount and I will immediately be rewarded with tangible results.

This may not be as obvious in other areas of life simply because I don’t have an obvious, objective measure. But I feel like there’s no question that it’s there. The impact is likely far greater in my life more broadly than it is just for weight training. After all: while there is a limit to how much I could conceivably lift (and I’m already a good chunk of the way there), there’s no limit to how “successful” I can be.

So this may be a nearly identical re-hash of the other blog post, but I’ve just continued thinking about it and felt I needed to expand upon it a bit more.

Armed with this understanding, I may have to change many things in my life.

 

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If I Have the Right Conditions, I Thrive – What Feels like Self-Discipline Often Isn’t

I’m currently dealing with my second bout with covid. Even so, today I got up early, I got my studying in quickly, I got all my work done and was productive there, and I even added in a weight training session and a sunset walk around the neighborhood.

Many of these things – especially the physical activities – weren’t really planned. I kind of just did them.

And it made me realize that a huge percentage of my behavior is really just based upon having the right conditions. I like to believe that I’m a free-willed being that strategically uses discipline and willpower to do exactly what’s needed at any given moment.

But in reality, I’m starting to think I have more in common – day-to-day – with a hamster that just needs to have enough food, water, clean bedding, and a wheel.

I think back to times when I’ve been super productive and even gone above and beyond on extra projects, and I’m realizing that it wasn’t any extraordinary effort or careful planning or anything like that. I just… Did it. I finished all my normal tasks, and still felt like accomplishing things, so I did.

And then I think about times when I wasn’t nearly as productive. And often it’s just the case that I got to the end of the day and just had nothing left in the tank. No desire to get anything done.

Now that I’m stating all of this, it seems so incredibly obvious. And yet I feel like I’ve almost never expressed in this blog before how critical it is that I get these conditions right.

Maybe it’s because I’ve so infrequently done it, so I never really knew.

Either way, I now believe that there is almost nothing more important than setting up the right conditions for myself to thrive. These are things like:

  • Getting adequate, quality sleep (treating sleep apnea is obviously key here)
  • Not drinking much or at all
  • Keeping up with exercise (both weight training and cardio)
  • Eating well
  • Staying hydrated
  • Staying on top of work
  • Keeping my home well-maintained
  • Keeping personal relationships in order and an active social life
  • Keeping up with hobbies

Of these, the first two are probably by far the most important both short and long-term. As long as those are good, I should generally have the energy to handle all of the rest.

Now clearly, self-discipline still has its place. And energy should still be used strategically, especially for things like building effective habits. But those are all multipliers.

I feel like establishing these conditions is really the base of my productivity and well-being, from which all success – in all areas – springs. Habits, willpower, and just about everything else – including productivity “hacks” – are really just going to be multipliers beyond that.

But 0 times 1000 is still 0. So if you don’t have the base established, you’re still going nowhere.

And either way, it is far easier to establish a new habit or stay on track if all of these conditions are met. When I’m well-rested and everything else is in place, it feels like I can do anything easily. There’s far less need for discipline or “willpower”.

While improvements from treating my sleep apnea haven’t come quite as quickly as I had hoped, I’m realizing now that many of them have absolutely have come.

Before treatment, it felt like I was exhausting all my willpower every day just to do the bare minimum. I didn’t have these conditions met, and so every day was kind of a struggle.

It wasn’t immediately obvious because I wasn’t “dropping the ball” on anything critical just to keep going, but long-term I think it manifested in lack of growth and other long-term initiatives stagnating.

But now… Even while recovering from covid, things are easier than they were. I can finish everything and still have energy left for more projects.

Obviously it’s better when I’m not sick, but the point remains that I didn’t have this before. It’s very subtle in that I don’t actively “feel” super different, but my behavior is totally different. I can get so much more done, my thinking is way more clear, and really it’s just all better.

Going forward, I need to prioritize getting these conditions right nearly all of the time. That may even entail near or total teetotaling. I’ve intentionally not really placed any limitations on myself in that area since ending my year-long break, just to compare. But the results seem to be clear: the benefits do not outweigh the cost.

I haven’t made any firm decisions yet, but either way: I will be much more conscientious going forward about making sure all my conditions are met to maximize my success – in all areas.