Category: Psychology

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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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Social Media and Phone Addiction is Devastating

I was taking the train from Taipei to the airport, and at one point I looked around at everyone else on the train and literally every single person – probably 100 within eye shot – was on their phone. Just glued to it.

They weren’t talking on their phone or anything, and from what I could tell, nobody was even doing anything productive. They were all just scrolling through mindless content.

And it made me realize just how completely devastating this is.

I feel like the “elites” have been doing everything they can to control people. Historically, that was done predominantly through vices like drugs and alcohol. One could argue that’s also the primary purpose of sports viewing.

But I would argue this is far more effective.

No longer are people ever alone with their thoughts. They have no time to do things with their lives or think through their own problems because every free moment is spent just staring at a screen and consuming mindless content.

It’s the most effective possible way to control people.

I think it’s probably far worse for people than anyone realizes.

When you don’t sleep properly, your body can’t recover from stress properly. Your brain doesn’t function right. You struggle to learn things or even form proper memories.

But what if you’re never bored? What if you’re never alone with your thoughts?

I believe that’s when you slip into the Default Mode Network (or perhaps I have it backwards).

What if this state is just as important as sleep? How are people supposed to take a step back and look at their life and make improvements if they never slip into that state?

I’m certainly not immune to the allure of doomscrolling. I’ve put a lot of effort into stopping and also eliminating most options for even doing it, but I do still find ways from time to time.

And I think that’s going to have to stop. It just made me to sad seeing so many people, not saying a word to each other. Just numbing themselves.

I think it’s so easy to just say it’s harmless, but I’m feeling more confident every day that it’s not true.

I think the people in charge absolutely know it’s not harmless and are trying to control the narrative so people don’t realize it is.

We know that much of this is true: I know at one point some private correspondence from Facebook came out proving that Mark Zuckerberg knew how harmful his products were to people and they just sort of ignored it.

I can’t control what other people do and I’m certainly not judging anyone. But I do control myself, and I think I need to make the decision to basically block all possible forms of mindless content consumption and make sure I never go back to it.

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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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Maybe It’s Beneficial when Pleasurable Things aren’t Pleasurable

I wrote this prompt for myself a while ago and am only just now writing about it, probably having a very different perspective on its subject matter.

Some background is in order.

Over the last handful of years, I’ve been working very hard on myself. I’ve been trying to figure out why I feel the way I do about things, how I can improve my mood and motivation, and just generally figure out a lot of things out.

And I’ve had a lot of luck!

The most obvious thing is that I have sleep apnea which I’m now treating, of course.

But in a way, I’m almost thankful that I have it, because it made me feel bad enough that I went searching for the causes of my problems and ended up working through a lot of personal things along the way. I feel that I’m generally stronger and better off now than I was at any point. Without sleep apnea, I may have never figured out some of those things because they wouldn’t have been bad enough to even look for.

Something I’ve learned is that if you have a lot of unresolved problems or you are living with a bad set of values, you’re bound to stop enjoying things. If you go long enough without dealing with your problems, eventually you spend all your time pushing those feelings down, and the net result is that you don’t feel much of anything anymore, other than maybe anger.

And I think that’s a sign.

Your body is warning you that something is going on and you need to deal with.

In a more direct and literal sense, it may just be that you’re triggering a stress response all the time and that shuts down many functions, resulting in anhedonia and other physical problems.

Regardless, the cause is unresolved problems or living poorly in some way, and the solution is to figure those things out.

Once those problems are gone, you should go back to normal and start feeling things properly again.

So basically what I’m saying is: if you stop getting pleasure from normal things, that isn’t the entirety of your problem. It’s just a symptom; a result.

It’s a warning sign that there is something else you need to deal with.

When stated this way, it’s clear that things like drugs, sex, or risky behavior that briefly makes you feel alive are not the solution. They might briefly make you feel better but they are just a band-aid.

You should have been feeling good to begin with. If you’re not, there is a reason. And you have to deal with that reason.

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We Focus on the Things We Think We’re Good at, and we Judge That Based on Comparisons to Others

I had a sort of epiphany today. I’ve long been formulating a sort of theory that humans have a need to feel special. I won’t go into too much detail on the base theory here, but basically it says that this need to feel special drives almost all of our behavior.

My epiphany is basically that we like things we feel we are good at, and we feel we are good at things if we can do them better than other people.

That maybe sounds very obvious and without any need of further explanation, but I think it’s actually relatively profound.

Let me explain how I got here.

I went for a run today. It wasn’t very far (less than a mile), and I did it quite slowly. I’m not in running shape, okay?

It wasn’t the most enjoyable and I definitely felt slow.

But then a thought occurred to me, “if it felt exactly the same as this, but I had completed it in a time that was better than the vast majority of people, would I like it more?”

And I realized the answer would be a resounding “yes”.

I also remember some times when I was running regularly, and I was way faster, and I did, in fact, like it way more.

We are always gauging our own performance against that of others. In basically everything. For the purposes of this post, I want to focus the discussion on skills and performance vs. other metrics and comparison.

I play guitar. Now that I’m older, other guitar players around me tend to be way better than me.

But if I could play at this level when I was in 9th grade, I’d feel like I was incredible. And by comparison: I would be. Most kids were just starting to play.

When thinking about it more, I realized that there are likely evolutionary reasons why things would work this way.

In contrast with Neanderthals, humans inherently form groups and societies. We don’t really ever survive out on our own. Societies evolved along with us.

And one of the things that makes our societies so effective is specialization. No one person can be great at everything. There just isn’t enough time to practice and learn enough about more than a few things, and our brains are likely not even capable of handling the extra workload.

So instead, we specialize.

But how do we choose what to specialize in?

I’m sure the answer is quite complicated, but my theory is that it’s basically what I’ve described above.

When you feel you are better than your peers at something, you enjoy it much more. And then you tend to spend more time on it, and get even better at it.

If you feel you are worse than others at something, you don’t enjoy it as much and you tend to give it up.

The key component of this system is “comparison with others”. By doing so, you ensure a broad range of specialization within a group. You only focus on what you do better than everyone else, and they do the same.

I imagine that feeling like you’re better than others at something also fills you with purpose and pride, leading you to feel good about yourself and more effective overall. It’s a reward for following our prewired specialization script.

It’s a pretty ingenuous system that ensures human groups are as effective as possible at ensuring the survival of the species and that everyone is contributing to the best of their ability.

Thinking to modern society, I suspect there may be real problems here. We know so many people and can see tons of really-talented people online, and the result is that most people don’t feel like they are actually that good at anything.

As a result, they don’t put time and effort into anything, and their self-esteem and sense of purpose suffer greatly.

Perhaps that’s really the greatest problem with social media.

There’s a lot to consider with this. I’ll have to revisit it and think through some more.

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How You Feel Determines How you Enjoy Things, not the Other Way Around

I had an epiphany the other day that when you feel good, you tend to enjoy things a lot more. Enjoying things isn’t really the way to feel good. It’s backwards!

Initially, the thought came to me while sipping on a pint of Guinness in Dublin with some friends. I recalled thinking during my last visit to Ireland that it was true: the Guinness there really did taste better than at home.

This time around, I’m not so sure. It seemed to be the same to me.

Regardless, I blurted out a half-formed theory that I think had been floating around in my head for some time: you enjoy everything better when you’re feeling good.

I noticed that when I was numb to the world, I tended not to enjoy… Just about anything.

And that when I was feeling really good, I became emotional about lots of things. I enjoyed things way more in general.

I think that applies even to things like taste, or music. When you’re feeling good, food tastes way better. Colors are more vivid. And music seems deeper and better.

And when you say it like that, it seems pretty obvious. Of course it’s true.

But I don’t think I’ve been living with that in mind.

Like most people, I think instinctually I’ve always had the thought, “I’m not feeling great. I need to do something enjoyable in order to feel better.”

And that’s exactly what most people do and what culture and society recommend.

Feeling bad? Treat yourself! Seek pleasure. Eat something tasty. Buy something expensive.

Maybe it’s the result of centuries of manipulation from marketing that our only solution to feeling bad is to seek material pleasure.

Regardless, I’ve found it doesn’t work very well, because those pleasures are greatly diminished if you’re depressed or generally feeling bad.

Instead of seeking out pleasure, I think we need to ask the question, “WHY am I feeling bad?” and the do our best to resolve the underlying issue.

Once again, this feels really obvious when you say it out loud, yet I’ve never heard anyone say it out loud.

A lifetime of pleasure-seeking any time you felt bad would mean that you are never, ever dealing with your actual problems and instead just trying to distract yourself.

It should be no surprise, then, that people eventually just become numb.

Obviously there’s a lot more to depression than this but I think it’s still a pretty important thing to keep in mind, and something that may prove to have a big impact on me personally.

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I Need to Reframe How I feel About Hard, Productive Work

I’m in the middle of an acquisition right now, and there has been quite a bit to do. This morning I was feeling a little overwhelmed and kind of sad at the prospect of all the work I would have to do today.

But then I sat and thought about it… Yes, there’s a lot of work, but it was a major goal to have an acquisition of this nature, and I did it. Now I just need to go through the work of implementing it.

It should feel like a victory lap. Yes, it’s a lot of work, and that means less time for other things, but at the same time, it’s good work. I’m on the track I set out for myself, accomplishing the things I wanted to accomplish.

I should be happy to have it!

I think I’ve just sort of adopted a mindset of avoiding anything that threatens to take up too much of my time. Perhaps that’s not the worst mindset to have, but it should be calibrated.

If the things that are taking up my time are things that I specifically sought out and help me reach my goals, then it doesn’t make any sense to avoid them or feel negatively about them.

While working through it, I should be excited that things are going well and that I’m doing the right thing.

Maybe this is one of those times where it would help to have some kind of business partner that could remind me of these things. It’s easy to lose perspective.

But at least I caught it and am addressing it now.

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The Purpose of Basically Everything is to Feel Good, So I Need to Prioritize Things that Maximize That

As humans, we like to believe that we are always incredibly deep and everything is meaningful and that every action and motivation is incredibly complicated.

But in the end, we just want to feel good.

Obviously there are many ways we go about feeling good, and feeling good in the short term often comes at the expense of feeling good in the long term (eating something tasty but bad for you, drinking, watching TV, etc.).

And, of course, perhaps some things feel good in different ways. Some things may be deeply fulfilling, while others may just feel like passing pleasure.

Yet just about anything we strive for, we do so because we believe it will make us feel good. Even for things like charity or volunteering; we think that we’ll feel good about ourselves if we do it. And that’s probably rightly-so!

But what if we just dropped the pretense and admitted that basically everything we do is an attempt to feel good? That’s literally how our brains work.

Even the most deeply selfless acts are most likely always the result of someone choosing the way in which they think they’ll feel best; often the resulting choice between intense emotional anguish or brief physical harm and maybe even death.

Now, you might be thinking, “I know people that are always trying to feel good, and that kind of hedonistic pleasure-seeking leads to a bad life.”

And this is where I think it’s important to note the difference between being impulsively drawn to short-term pleasure and carefully planning to feel good long-term.

I’m starting to think that it’s better to plan – virtually always – to maximize how you feel long-term.

So let’s look at a common example: drinking.

Drinking is famously enjoyable in the short (when done in moderation). But what about the long-term?

It would seem that even relatively small amounts of drinking have a pretty serious, lingering, negative impact on mood and other measures of well-being.

At the risk of being overly analytical, if you were to graph how you felt over time, the purpose of life (or at least the unavoidable aim as mammals) is to maximize the integral; the area under the curve.

While most people are probably decent at doing that for the next… 15 minutes, they are not so good at doing it long-term. And that’s what I want to focus on.

Sure, I want my highs to be high. But I don’t want my lows to be so low, and I certainly don’t want to be feeling bad most of the time.

Yet that’s where I think most people are. They live in an unhealthy way, they work too much, they spend too much, they don’t communicate, their priorities are off, they drink, they don’t sleep enough, and in the end they might have some moderately high highs, but most of the time they are very low.

And I don’t want that.

So going forward, I’m going to think a lot more about this concept and use it to reevaluate things like drinking and see if it wouldn’t be better to just give it up completely.

I need to focus on the things that will maximize the area under that curve at all times. Even at the expense of other activities, like working.

Pretty much anything that is “healthy” falls under this category. I don’t think total deprivation is necessary, but I do need to focus my efforts where they will be most beneficial.