Do what you look forward to doing.

That sounds kind of obvious, but I’ve realised it’s quite powerful.

Obviously, we have to do many things we don’t look forward to doing. Going into work, cooking a meal - these things can drag on our soul. But it’s outside such commitments where we need to choose (and choose well) how to spend our time.

This summer I read a book. It was the first fiction book I’d read in a while, and I noticed that when I wasn’t actually reading it, I was spending a lot of time thinking about it. As afternoons turned into evenings, I would look forward to being able to retreat to my room so that I could lose myself in my book. I had a sustained and specific interest in it. And I wondered whether I had ever felt the same way about browsing Reddit, or binging a show on Netflix, or swiping on Tinder. Are these activities which appeal ahead of time, except in bolts of compulsion, directly as they strike?

The answer is almost always no. I don’t look forward to browsing Reddit. The latency period between wanting to browse Reddit, and actually browsing Reddit, is usually a couple of seconds at most. This is a compulsion, not an interest.

And so we have a way of bifurcating our experiences into things we truly enjoy doing, and things we are simply addicted to doing. If you don’t have to do it, and you weren’t looking forward to doing it - go and do something else.