What Am I Doing?

It’s a question I think all of us, at a certain age and time of our lives, start asking. What am I doing–with my time, my body, my mind, my finances, or whatever? We get to a point where it becomes clear and holds weight that our time is limited. And it suddenly feels more important than it did yesterday how we use that time.

Consumption and Boxes

When I look back on how I’ve spent my time as an adult, so far, it’s clear that I am first and foremost a consumer. The majority of my free time is spent watching YouTube videos, movies, playing video games, or reading books. None of these things is inherently bad–though I’d prefer I did some more than others–but it dawned on me recently that I spend more time watching videos about photography, than I do doing photography. That’s not exactly what teenage me likely had in mind, but… Where is that time going?

The obvious answer is that time doesn’t go anywhere. It’s used up and, at best, leaves nothing but a memory. But, it’s been helpful to think of my time spent going into boxes. Each box has a little label, one of those plastic ones with the raised black text, that specifies the category that time belongs to. For a long time I thought, as I’m sure many would, that these box categories sort by topic and so videos I watched about photography go in the Photography box. But the reality is that, most of the time, that’s not really true. The reality is that time should go in the Watching Videos box. The box categories sort by action, first. When you frame it that way that time on YouTube suddenly stops feeling productive.

Now, that’s not always the case. I could watch a video on how to photograph a specific subject or how to do something with my particular camera, but the idea there would be to then go and do it. Then, maybe, that time could go into the Photography box.

So What?

Well, I guess this is just me feeling like I should do more with my time. I’m 34, and while I don’t have grand ambitions or feel like I need to “make a name for myself,” I do want to look back on my life and be able to think, “yeah, I did some of the things I wanted to do.”

The obvious goal, then, is to start creating more than consuming. The caveat being that not all consumption is equal and some might even be good.

A System

Me being me, this makes me want a system. A set of rules I can try to enforce upon myself¹. I’m reminded of a post by Dave Rupert called Priority of idle hands in which he talks about the struggle of loving the internet, but wanting to spend less time on it. At the end, he came up with a phrase, a “priority of constituencies,” for his idle hands.

And I can super duper relate. I want to better prioritize my free time. So, I’ve come up with my own!

People over cameras over books over screens.