Doing less

I am not a person of new year's promises, but I do like to think about what I am doing, how, and what I might like to change.

As always, I have a well-kept list of things I would like to do more of and get better at.

Looking at that list last night, I was hit with unusual clarity by the fact that picking something off of that list is not the real problem. These are all things I would like to do.

No, the real problem is picking substantial things to do less of.

At the moment, I do not want to do less of any of the substantial things I fill my time with. There is always the thought of magically being able to have more energy and focus within the available downtime - the time spent on random browsing, being upset by social networks and so on - but I bet there always will be downtime of some sort. Even if I got off Twitter and Facebook, I would still spend time doing things more relaxed than those "do more" projects.

Another interesting thought was that as long as I like the major things I do, life changes will mainly affect the activity within and the amount of downtime I have. If the amount of time to myself changes, I will still make time for the major things and be happy when new activities take huge bites out of the time spent on aimless browsing.

So far so good. I take this whole train of thought as I sign things are pretty good.

(Still, it would be exciting to come up with a big activity to truly do less of.)