I've Been Addicted To Being Busy
Takeaway Points:
For the past few years, I’ve had an unhealthy relationship with entertainment media.
How it was impacting me, and what I did to break out of this cycle.
I’ve written in the past how I dealt with depression at the age of 16, and how I recovered in large part thanks to a newfound love of exercise. That recovery period significantly changed who I am as a person, made me far more interested in learning and self-improvement, and ultimately set me on the path to who I am today.
Unfortunately, a side effect of my recovery, which I refused to admit to myself until more recently, is that I became addicted to being busy.
I’ve always been a completionist when it comes to books, movies, television, and video games. If I started something, I just had to finish it. In order to be on top of pop culture, that meant I had to consume all of it, as fast as I could. I wanted to be the best at everything, which meant that I had to consume everything. I was always trying to stay on top of the latest of everything. I wanted to be able to talk intelligently about anything.
This also meant that I had a tendency to take on too many hobbies, too many projects, too many ideas. I couldn’t reject anything, which meant that I had to accept everything.
Many times, this meant slogging through things that I absolutely hated. I was terribly in denial, myself, about how much time I was wasting, just passively consuming things that I thought I “should”, because they were cool or new, or because I had seen people talking about them. Many of these things, I would never really end up talking with anyone else about anyway, even though I was ostensibly consuming them in order to be able to have conversations about them.
A huge problem that I often had, was that I could never remember all the stuff I was supposed to be doing. I would ask for book recommendations and then forget them all, or always have trouble remembering what movie I wanted to see. So I created lists on my phone’s notes app - “books to read”, “movies to watch”, “video games to play”, “stuff to replay”, and so on. In this way, I wouldn’t forget. When one thing was done, I would cross it off and move on to the next one. I am fundamentally a person who gets great joy out of crossing things off of lists.
I always had something to do. An audiobook for listening to during housework or a trip to the store. A book for reading while I’m waiting around for an appointment. An app to use to study something. A podcast to listen to. A downloaded movie to watch. A mobile game to play.
The end result of this process was that somewhere along the line, I became addicted to the feeling of being busy, even at the same time that I hated being so busy. I wanted more time to relax to myself, so that I could focus on crossing more things off my list. I was always trying to multitask, finding ways to combine my tasks - listening to an audiobook while playing a video game, watching a television show while writing client emails.
This created a bizarre warping of work and play. Since I was mixing the two, I would often get off of work and feel like working more - or feel like the non-work things that I normally did to calm down, were no longer calming because they were still mixed with work in my mind. Because the things I did “for fun” were ultimately just another kind of work (ticking boxes, crossing off more items on The Holy List), I was always busy in some way or another. I went through years of this. It held me back from seeing friends. It held me back from doing the things I really wanted to do.
The worst part was that The List itself rarely made me truly happy. Many times I would run out of things on The List, and I would become very bored and immediately try to find a bunch of other things to put on it so that I could get back to crossing them off. When I ran out of good things to put on the list, I would often simply re-read, re-watch, or re-play until more things happened to pop up to put on the list. I was terrified of being bored.
This created a kind of temporal loop in which I was never living in the moment, never doing things when I wanted to do them - I couldn’t do what I wanted to do now, because I had a long list of things to get through first - and I couldn’t enjoy the things on the list because by the time I worked my way down to them, that spark that had driven me to want to do that thing was no longer present. I would put a book on the list because of a temporary interest I had in a subject, only to try to end up reading it years later, having forgotten why I put it on the list in the first place, no longer interested in the topic at all.
A few years back, I began to work from home full time. I bought a second monitor for my desktop, and I would always be watching something while I was working. For probably 2-3 straight years, I would watch movies and television while I worked. I ran out of things I was interested in, and soon I got to a point where I would just put on anything I could find on Netflix, no matter how bad it was or how little I was interested in it. This eventually pushed me to the point that I was so apathetic about film media, that I just had no desire to open Netflix at all.
Over the last couple years, I’ve had the same thing happen with video games and books, to some extent or another. I came to the realization that all media is, for the most part, entertainment. Sure, it’s ideally good - you want to learn something from it, you want to enjoy the experience, etc. - but at the end of the day, it’s just about entertaining you for a while. It’s just about using up some of the precious time you have on this earth. It’s about avoiding the stuff you really need to do, by pretending that you have some dire need to see the latest whatever.
I also realized that my deep-seated love for ticking things off of lists, consistently completing simple small tasks, made me vulnerable to the systems in particular kinds of video games, which are designed specifically to satisfy that need. I played World of Warcraft on and off for over a decade. I have played multiple idle games for at least a few years each. These games alone aren’t necessarily a problem by themselves, but at the end of the day they represented a huge time sink that ate up an absurd amount of my time in the long run, without really giving me too much to show for it.
Despite this realization, I’ve had a hard time letting go. I replayed a bunch of the video games I enjoyed as a kid - only to find that many of them have lost their magic since. I watched a bunch of old movies. I replayed Final Fantasy 7 in preparation for the recent remake. I thought a lot about what it means to really enjoy myself, and I realized that I’ve been chasing the feelings I used to have more than creating the new feelings I want to experience.
When I was a kid, all this stuff blew my mind. I was young, and this was all new. But now I’ve seen a lot more. I don’t need to play every video game to have the rough feeling of what they’re like. I don’t have to finish something I’m not enjoying. I’ve been practicing quitting more effectively in the last few years.
Lately, I’ve been looking forward to being less busy. I’ve deleted my to-do list. I’m enjoying having more time to just… be more bored. I’m spending more time relaxing in the backyard. I’m gardening. I’ve gotten really into composting. I’m meditating regularly. I’m writing more. I’m actually working on all the creative projects I’ve been putting off for years. I’m doing fewer things, but I’m focusing on doing them more fully. I’m feeling more proud of the time I’m spending, alive on this planet.
Looking back, I realize that the last time I felt like this was back at university, when I was partying and hanging out with friends on a constant basis, and I just did the work I needed to do and didn’t worry too much about it. The process of establishing a career, developing my business, finding a partner, taking care of myself and later my family - pushing myself through that process took something out of me, and now for the first time, I’m finding it again.
This isn’t to say that I won’t play video games, won’t read books, won’t watch television, of course. I’m still going to enjoy the parts of it that really matter to me, but I’ve developed a healthier relationship with media entertainment.
I’m going to spend my time enjoying the sunrise. I’m going to actually cook hot breakfast more often. I’m going to spend more time with my family. I’m going to take better care of my skin. I’m going to finally get a new project off the ground. I’m going to sip my coffee slowly. I’m going to keep the house a bit cleaner. I’m going to read more in Danish.
I’m going to enjoy myself more. I’m going to just be a new person.
About Adam Fisher
Adam is an experienced fitness coach and blogger who's been blogging for 5+ years, coaching for 6+ years, and lifting for 12+ years. He's written for numerous major health publications, including Personal Trainer Development Center, T-Nation, Bodybuilding.com, Fitocracy, and Juggernaut Training Systems.
During that time he has coached hundreds of individuals of all levels of fitness, including competitive powerlifters and older exercisers regaining the strength to walk up a flight of stairs. His own training revolves around powerlifting and bodybuilding.
Adam writes about fitness, health, science, philosophy, personal finance, self-improvement, productivity, the good life, and everything else that interests him. When he's not writing or lifting, he's usually hanging out with his cat or feeding his video game addiction.
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