The title can be a bit confusing, and it my not be a direct question here, but the question is based on myself being in a place in my life where everything moves very fast, I have lots of things to do, and little time enjoying things that earlier would define my life. I have recently started on a journey trying to make my spare time more “slow”, to be more in the moment at actually enjoy doing the small things.
Examples of this can be that I have made my smartphone very dumb, by removing all the apps that makes you doom scroll. This was not hard as I lost interest in Instagram, facebook and other apps about 3 years ago. I just felt like I was “too old” for these kinds of apps and the time they steal from you (I am “only” 33 now).
I have also sold my SteamDeck, and instead bought a old-ish computer running windows 7 and a CRT monitor that I keep in my apartment. I use this to play older games that I know I enjoy, as well as trying out the games I never played as a kid (I only played sports games, but found out I really love everything from Elder Scrolls to Ghost recon and so on). In this way I find it more enjoying to sit down on a Friday night, after me and my girlfriend have eaten the usual Friday dinner and watched some crap movie (because that’s default in our lives these days. Watching stuff on streaming and scrolling at the same time) and have a beer by my side playing something or exploring some content online. ON A CRT MONITOR. I know I sound like a tool trying very hard for nostalgia, but I cant’ feel anything other than that its working.
I am also considering other things to “dumb” down my life for the sake of getting some kind of “peace” with the things I do. For example buying physical news papers to have a “quiet” moment reading, instead of sitting on my phone doing four things at the same time.
Has anyone else felt this way about not being in the moment when doing things?
I kind of have the opposite. Sometimes I have to fight myself from losing myself to the moment, exploring all the permutations of thought of what is happening in the moment, what its implications are, what else would compliment it or sour it, how others around me are experiencing it (or ignorant of it), the visceral experience, the light/texture/smell/temperature, the infinite possibilities of the circumstances of the moment and every branch the next second could follow. Then I realize I’ve been daydreaming again, and have to drag myself back to the toned-down reality of what life chore I have to do next.
You mention several things in your live that distract you (doomscrolling, steamdeck, etc). Those offer someone else’s prepackaged experiences for you to consume, which is their purpose. Distraction. There’s nothing wrong with those, as long as they aren’t consuming you all the time.
Can I ask if you allow yourself to daydream?
I can relate to what you are saying and I am certainly daydreaming. My problem is that when I am in “such” moments, I get a strange feeling that I schould be doing something else. Something important or something that I am missing out on. That be work, beer with friends or just a simple task then and there.
Ah okay, thats a different problem, with different a solution.
On its surface you’re expressing you don’t have permissions to just enjoy the moment, that there is some other pressing issue that you should be putting your attention to instead.
Instead what you have is a budgeting problem. Except our scarce resource isn’t money, but time. There are only so many hours in a day, and if you let it, an infinite number of tasks to complete. Knowing that you can only do so much in a day, and only a fraction of that time can be spent on “productive” activities. You have to give time to yourself or you’ll go nuts. So first, decide how much time of the day (outside of work and sleep) you are going to put to “productive” activities. That number can’t simply be all the waking hours that aren’t sleeping, working, or eating. Be realistic. Then along with that budget time to slack off where your only responsibility is no responsibility. If you are daydreaming during that slack off time, you know there’s nothing else you should be doing. The thing you should be doing is slacking off.
More pragmatically, instead of having a daily time budget, have a weekly one. You can work yourself hard one day if it means allowing yourself a longer continuous slack off time later in the week.