High-quality leisure

To reclaim my time from digital distractions I need to fill it with something to do. Otherwise my brain will miss the "no-energy-needed" dopamine from doom-scrolling and looking at short-form content.

I know deep down that "one more video" on youtube about some obscure topic has 0 to no value to me, and that I will probably forget it in the next 24 hours.

Digital Minimalism

Cal Newport argues in his book Digital Minimalism that you need high-quality alternatives to the internet's low-quality dopamine hits. It is also argued that this leisure should be done offline or physically. And done for oneself only.

What do I want to do?

As a person who spent a considerable amount of time gaming since a young age, I don't quite know what I'd like to do. Sports never captured my attention.

I have begun to pick up lots of reading in the last year. I picked up a kindle, and Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy after a recommendation from a good friend. Which threw me into reading fiction, and later started me down books around focus and leadership.

Set time off to do low-quality leisure

A great way to have time for high-quality leisure is to actually set time off for the low quality ones as well. Since this will make sure that I don't feel like I could be missing out by not checking up on my phone. Not forcing myself to never go back to "mindless" youtube videos, but that I have some time to check up on the creators I do like to watch.

Things I want to do

• Fixing my worn clothes
• Writing for myself (and others?)
• Take deliberate time to just think
• Make my home a better place
• Photography sessions
• Work on side-projects
• Set up backups outside of cloud providers