Note

Many people have written about how everyone would be happier if they uninstalled social media, stopped watching TV, and rested by doing the things they enjoyed instead. At the risk of being trite and repetitive, I’d like to add my personal account to the pile.

The first time I came across this idea and it really stuck was in Sean Plott’s video on energy management. Later, I found Neel Nanda's blog post on meaningful rest, which breaks it down even more simply. I’d recommend anyone to check out both (fairly short), but I’ve also summarized them below.

Sean offered a structured classification:

Maintenance Activities: Basic human needs we can't skip: eating well, sleeping well, hygiene, cleanliness.

Energizing Activities: These require effort upfront but leave you more excited to continue. For him, things like learning new skills, reading engaging books, and working on meaningful projects.

Restful Activities: To him, this was walks and listening to music, going to coffee shops, and silent massages.

Time-Filling Activities: Neutral ways to pass time. Browsing social media or watching TV shows. Not inherently bad, but rather activities that leave you back in the same state after you stop.

Neel's approach is even simpler: figure out what actually rejuvenates you, then make those things easy to do.

A crucial insight here is that personal classifications might look completely different from mine or Sean's or anyone else's. A friend of mine discovered this after college. She was working really hard at her job and felt exhausted and unhappy all the time. She followed the conventional wisdom and took time-off or weekends to “practice self-care" and relaxation, but this did not help whatsoever. However, when she tried the opposite approach, filling essentially all her free time with social activities and spending zero time alone, she felt energized and happy again.

Thinking about rest this way has been genuinely useful for me. Neel’s approach for reducing activation energies didn’t work quite so well for me and I don’t quite agree with Sean that time-wasters aren’t inherently bad. Life is amazing and fun; the opportunity cost of doing things that don’t bring me any happiness is huge.

Instead of making it easier to do other things, I’ve focused on making it more difficult to do time-filling activities. I've uninstalled Instagram entirely. I blocked Reddit and Twitter on my phone and computer using Digital Wellbeing and Leechblock. I don’t start new shows, unless I’m watching them with friends. I still read plenty of Substack and watch YouTube and occasionally browse r/nba, but these feel closer to the positive end of the energy spectrum. And if I notice myself consuming these too much, I try to be conscious about temporarily disabling them as well.

In the time opened up, I’m spending more time working, calling my friends, reading books, and going for walks. And so far, that’s made me significantly happier.