Link: https://youtu.be/fAuiE7kpBgg
A popular streamer, caster, personality, and gamer named Day9 (Sean Plott) made a video the other week that really spoke to me talking about in detail his realizations for what he needs are and how to categorize and be successful at them without feeling burnt out or letting time get bloated up and wasted.
To give a little bit of background, Day9 has a background in mathematics and loves to dabble in programming projects. He also frequently streams a large variety of video games, and casts a lot of special tournaments and events.
In this article, Day9 mentions a few weeks ago going through a burn out from his day to day life. He asked himself, “What do I do now?” His response was to do what the common response is, which is take a chill pill and kinda relax for a while. So he began to do that for a couple of days and realized that he wasn’t actually feeling less tired or exhausted or burnt out.
In this article I’m going to talk about the lessons I learned from him as he identified his needs as well as compare how his model works in my life.
After 2-3 weeks of working out less, browsing Reddit and doing time-wasters instead of more ‘productive’ tasks, Day9 still felt burnt out. Now a common response to that is for some to say that he was possibly just REALLY burnt out and needed more time to chill, but Day9 recognized with himself that he needs more plans to feel himself. To quote, “I get uncomfortable and itchy if I don’t have awareness of a plan, even if that plan is sit in an inner tube on the ocean and stare at the ocean for 3 hours.”
Reflecting this with my own tendencies I realized that was certainly a realization I had to come to. I NEED my projects like this silly blog to feel myself and to feel like my life is balanced. I also need to occasionally chill and occasionally go incredibly ham on some aspect of my life.
So back to Day9, he thought at first that chilling and resting should give you energy. But then someone gave him a breakdown that I want to explore here.
Let’s break activities into 4 groups:
Maintenance activities – basic human maintenance like hygiene and cleanliness (going to bed on time, showering, diet, exercise)
Energizing activities – things like generate energy and stimulate (for Day9 examples are reading a stimulating book, studying a skill, working on a project)
Restful activities – alone time to unwind (for Day9 this is isolated activities that involve no other people like putting in headphones and listening to music or getting coffee at a shop without talking to anyone else)
Time-filling activities – things that don’t stimulate the brain much nor give you new content to talk about nor give you the ability to unplug or rest fully, things to do for mild stimulation (for Day9 this is surfing Reddit, derping on Twitter, playing a multiplayer game with friends without trying)
What Day9 saw in his life after making this breakdown was that he saw his time-filling activities balloon into the rest of his life. As a result his life was still out of balance but this time in the direction of less mindful dopamine filling activities. So back again came his programming projects and stimulating conversations he scheduled in. He scheduled restful time after a rough day. He made time to do the other things that stimulated him and as a result he feels like he is in more control. He feels like there’s more of a full person. He figured out his needs, gave them names, and learned how to satisfy them.
So I asked myself what are these activities for me? A quick mockup for me looks something like this:
Maintenance activities – regular bedtime, showering, cleaning, feeding pets, watering plants
Energizing activities – working on my game projects, blogging, gardening, basketball, etc
Restful activities – streaming music, playing video games I haven’t played before OR innovating in ones I do play, playing guitar alone
Time-filling activities – social media, Reddit x10000, going on YouTube, watching NBA games, playing League of Legends or any multiplayer game I play all the time
I think reflecting on this list and this insightful video I can clearly see where I am usually feeling my best when I feel like I have a balanced life in these categories. I notice that I tend to exaggerate my time-filling and diminish my maintenance activities.
What is your breakdown and how is your balance?
huesteus 