When you feel you have to spend 100% of your free time in a useful way to have something to look back upon positively ten years from now, you forget to live in the moment. Turning every action into progress can take the joy out of those activities. Especially when you have the feeling that you should use the corona restricted period of your life in a useful way because there aren’t as many fun things to look forward to.
Gamification?
As a kid, I used computer games to learn for exams by changing the names of Crusader Kings II characters into Indo-European linguistic changes. Every time these characters popped up in the game it helped me to remember the phonetic changes I needed to learn by heart. I did the same for cities in Civilization V – numbers of tax court cases this time – and found a way to include questions about civil law into a Football Manager game to help my brother learn for his exams. Was I really playing a game or learning something new?
Neither probably. As the game became less of a thing I did for entertainment, it did less for my feeling of joy. I still had fun playing the games, but I wasn’t looking forward to continue playing as much. The ‘one more turn (/year)’ feeling had disappeared. At the same time, I wasn’t memorizing the course syllabus as fast as I usually did. The game was helping me learn but not in an effective way. Doing one after the other in timeslots would have been better.
Blogging
Fast-forwarding to my post-university life also known as my blogging as a hobby next to a full-time job life. The setting is different, but I feel like I am doing the same thing. I am reading more books than ever because I want to review some of them on my blog or add them to my booklists. For that, I choose books with a recent publication date or a low number of ratings and in particular books from authors that fit the topic of my blog: international authors from countries that I write travel posts about. I feel really good when I can add another book to my booklists with recommendations about Korea, Japan, Finland or Malaysia (does Space also count?), because that also means I liked the book.
While I enjoy reading these books, I long for the lighter books I used to read more often in the past. My less sophisticated pleasure reads so to say. But reading these would not be a useful way to spend my time, except that I get to reload my energy. Not only would it help to do one thing using my full attention – even if it is for a shorter time – but also to not spend every single hour in a useful way which would only increase my effectiveness in the hours I do spend on my blog.
Solution
My solution: to write down the things I want to have achieved in ten years. If I succeed in those somewhere along the line then that is enough to look back upon and I can accept that the other hours in my life are for living in the moment. Doing fewer chores no matter how much I love the outcome of them.
In ten years, will I have published the book that I dreamed of writing for so many years? Yes! I only have to write about 70.000 words which is less than 10.000 a year or 1000 a month. I can easily write 1000 words on a good day so even if I write only one day per month I can finish my book in ten years. Easy! I wrote more than that for my blog which now has 160 posts and counting. I started out with nothing and created all this within eight months. One post at a time.
At first, I was like a writing machine on steroids: the posts almost wrote themselves. Especially in the weeks after returning from my month-long trip to South Korea. Then it became harder, as the energy I got from traveling diminished with every passing day. By approaching it one post at a time and by not forcing myself to have all posts ready three weeks in advance I notice that I am writing posts that are more relevant in a specific week. Posts about what’s on my mind right now, like the lockdown and books-yet-to-be-published that I am eager to read. Those posts will make way again for travel and museum-related posts in their own time. It is never too late for these.
As for my book: I already wrote my 1000 words this month. So I am done for April! Good job. Time to read a fun feelgood book (last week I read Karen Swan – The Christmas Lights!).
If I can do it, then you can do it too:
- Live fully and allow for fun
- Divide your plance into manageable chunks
- Focus and don’t do things halfway
- Follow your feelings: if lockdown is what’s on your mind, then write about that
Have you ever dreamed of writing a book?
