Better Input; Better Output
I want to do things that bring me joy. I need the capacity to do them.
Like many people my age, I feel so overwhelmed by the volume and intensity of input that getting out of bed can feel daunting and it's all I can do at the end of the day to mindlessly look at my phone for 45 minutes before going to bed exhausted.
Add to this all the noise in the news, social media (especially legacy social, which is literally designed to make users feel bad), not to mention all the stuff that has always stressed people out: bills, taxes, food and housing costs...
I'm working on a plan to make it easier on myself. Some of this I already do well, but there's room for improvement.
- Boundaries
- I set my work hours.
- Hard limits on negative interactions.
- Phone notifications off, except priority contacts.
- No legacy social (Facebook, etc.).
- Mastodon heavily filtered into a personalized garden of neat, interesting, informative, creative, funny, silly things. Limited to 1 hour per week.
- TV limited to 2 hours per week.
- Newsfeeds limited to 10 min per week.
- Healthy input
- Leisure reading and listening to music any time for any amount of time.
- Time outside.
- Home cooking.
- Exercise.
- Real, face-to-face conversations with friends and family.
- Actively learning (music, Japanese, tech, history...)
- More valuable output
Setting boundaries and improving input creates space and opportunity for good things to happen more often. Less burnout. More capacity. The goal isn't to be a creative powerhouse. Just to be open to the possibility of creating things, memories, moments.
Time is more valuable to me than money because I cant earn it back.