---
title: "How to Spend Time"
date: 2023-04-29T23:36:25-04:00
draft: false
references:
- title: "What Do You Want to Make Real in the World? — Anna Havron"
  url: https://www.annahavron.com/blog/what-do-you-want-to-make-real-in-the-world
  date: 2023-04-30T03:38:36Z
  file: www-annahavron-com-34fw9w.txt
- title: "Spend Exactly None Of Your Time Killing Time"
  url: https://deadspin.com/spend-exactly-none-of-your-time-killing-time-1831777904
  date: 2023-04-30T03:40:23Z
  file: deadspin-com-cjpmjw.txt
- title: "Sunday Firesides: To-Dos, the Rent We Pay For Living | The Art of Manliness"
  url: https://www.artofmanliness.com/character/advice/sunday-firesides-to-dos-the-rent-we-pay-for-living/
  date: 2023-04-30T03:43:27Z
  file: www-artofmanliness-com-6lxmwc.txt
---

Broadly, three categories of productive activities:

* **Chores** -- things you have to do to maintain stasis.
  * [Sunday Firesides: To-Dos, the Rent We Pay For Living | The Art of Manliness][3]
* **Improving the world** -- not in some grand sense necessarily, but activities that create lasting improvement: building things, fixing things, getting rid of things.
  * [What Do You Want to Make Real in the World? — Anna Havron][4]
* **Improving yourself** -- things you do to make you better at doing other things.

> Book smarts, street smarts. Learning by study, learning by doing.
> Read about it, apply it, see it in action, take that practical experience
> back to your reading, deepen your understanding, take that deeper
> understanding back to your activity ... it's a never-ending cycle, each
> aspect of learning feeding the other.
>
> -- [_The Slight Edge_][1] ([p. 180][2])

[1]: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL2777748W/The_Slight_Edge?edition=key%3A/books/OL9820911M
[2]: slight_edge_180.pdf
[3]: https://www.artofmanliness.com/character/advice/sunday-firesides-to-dos-the-rent-we-pay-for-living/
[4]: https://www.annahavron.com/blog/what-do-you-want-to-make-real-in-the-world

{{<thumbnail graph1 "500x" />}}

---

Experiences:

* Routine
* Novel

Leisure:

* Most of my hobbies are hard (satisfying but somewhat stressful)
* I don't really have leisure activities besides reading fiction
* I spend a lot of time mindlessly scrolling my phone
* [Spend Exactly None Of Your Time Killing Time][5]

[5]: https://deadspin.com/spend-exactly-none-of-your-time-killing-time-1831777904

Sleep:

* Getting 7+ hours is important. It can feel like a waste of time when it's 11:30 and you're on a roll, but an extra hour of sleep can mean the difference between a good day and a bad one.
* If you're tired mid-day, just take a nap.

> Napping makes you smarter. Seriously. Lots of studies show napping improves alertness and cognitive performance in the af noon. As usual, we've tested the science ourselves.
>
> You don’t even have to fall asleep. Just lying down and resting for ten to twenty minutes can be a great way to recharge.
>
> -- [_Make Time_][6] ([p. 232-233][7])

[6]: https://bookshop.org/p/books/make-time-how-to-focus-on-what-matters-every-day-jake-knapp/12094196?ean=9780525572428
[7]: make_time_232.pdf