Making space for happiness
Part I of III on habits, hobbies, and happiness: a few short stories
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I love doing dishes
I started thinking about writing this post a few months ago. At that time, I noticed that I seemed to enjoy washing dishes and meal prepping each night. I would even suggest to my wife that she watch TV or otherwise relax, as if I was doing her a favor by doing these chores. I didn’t have the language or understanding then to describe what was going on.
I eventually came to the conclusion that I had successfully paired otherwise mundane chores with an activity that I actually enjoy: listening to podcasts. If you’ve read any other content on this blog, I hope that I’ve convinced you that I enjoy learning, and I find podcasts a great way to learn. Trouble was, back in the early part of 2018, I stopped listening to podcasts during my work commute; in fact, I stopped trying to do anything during my commute. With this new pairing, I began listening to podcasts more regularly again while also taking care of household chores.
For the rest of the post, I will walk through a couple of other habits I formed. I present these in hopes of illustrating how I think habits can help form or facilitate hobbies, and how habits and hobbies can help make space for happiness. Towards the end I get a little philosophical, which is an attempt to set up parts II and III of this broader post.
Reducing screen time
Have you ever been mad at yourself for wasting minutes, or even hours, lost in your phone? I certainly have. Over the years, I’ve taken several steps to reduce screen time, including turning off notifications. I’m also glad that my phone provides a screen time metric for me. Last week, I hit what I think is my lowest average daily screen time, which was 42 minutes. There are a lot of factors for why I think that number has trended lower. I’d like to think, however, that my conscious decision to do so helped.
I began to place my phone out of reach: in one of the drawers in the TV stand, or in a bin inside my closet. I’ll go hours without even thinking about my phone now. It didn’t start that way, though. When I began this effort to reduce screen time, I would simply leave it in another room. For example, I’d leave it on my dresser in my bedroom before I went into the living room. That worked then, and still works, but there’s a certain temptation to check my phone whenever I see it when I go into my bedroom. Having it completely out of sight does keep it out of mind.
Morning routine, and planning the day
I like routine, and I like having a morning routine. I usually wake up by 5:15 a.m., and I’m ready to start the day by 5:35 a.m. I do 15-25 minutes of exercise. Next I meditate for 10-20 minutes. If it’s a weekday, I work until about 7:30-7:45 a.m., which is usually when my son wakes up. If it’s the weekend, I’ll either read or write. If I sleep in, I’ll meditate first, even though I find meditating more productive after some exercise. The reason I switch the order is because I can usually find time to exercise later in the day more easily than I can find time or space to meditate.
My wife and I are both working from home at the moment. Rather than try to be part-time parents part of the day, i.e., try to work and care for our son at the same time, we’ve staggered our individual days into work hours and family hours. To give this schedule some credence, we block off these hours on both our work and personal calendars. During work hours, we work. During family hours, we family. To the best we can, the two should not overlap. Every Sunday, we look ahead for the next two weeks and make sure the schedule still fits. All of this is a work in progress; things crop up, and we need to maintain flexibility. Thankfully, my wife is much more easy-going and patient than me.
Habituating for the hobby
Morning exercise and meditation have turned into hobbies for me. They aren’t just activities that I think I need to do, but they’re activities that I enjoy doing. I get to be wholly selfish during the first two or so hours of the day. During my set time, I get to take care of myself. During the other parts of the day, I then get to focus on my other values in a way that aligns with my principles. In short, my core values are my family, friends, and fitness (emotion, mental, physical). In a few words, my principles are compassion, rectitude, humility, sincerity, earnestness, competence, enthusiasm, persistence.
With my new routine in full swing, I started to crave the mornings, and the exercise, and the meditation. Then I thought to myself, what if I could change my mindset to approach other parts of my day with the same attitude? I started to actively say I’m looking forward to hanging out with my son. In a similar way to my morning routine, family time became moments to be wholly focused on my family. I didn’t have anything else on my mind because my system enabled me to forget about finding time to exercise and meditate, checking work updates on my computer, or seeing the latest notification on my phone (it’s nowhere to be found!).
Extending it to everything
What if I could approach each moment with this attitude? Instead of looking forward to these pre-scheduled parts of the day, could I just enjoy each moment, for all moments? The payoff could be remarkable. I don’t believe this change in mindset is going to be possible unless I continue to protect my time. I’ll continue to keep myself as distraction free from all devices during moments that do not require them. I’ll continue to prioritize my morning routine, and be deliberate about other parts of my day.
Generalizing
I talked about three broad habits: (1) chores, specifically dishes and meal prepping, and pairing them with podcasting, (2) removing “distractions,” specifically, my phone, and (3) routine, specifically, my morning routine, and daily and weekly scheduling. These habits, formed over several weeks if not months, enabled my hobbies, which in of themselves, provide a sort of pleasure and happiness. And just as important, these habits helped me create the space to be happy in other parts of my day.
Although this approach and mindset is unique to me and my circumstances, I think I can make some generalizations about habits, hobbies, and happiness, or observations at the very least. I have had many conversations with friends and family that have to do with “not having enough time” or “wanting more money.” I think resolution or analysis of either problem requires a clear sense of values from the concerned individuals, and an honest assessment of principles. As I’ve written above, I try to focus on my values in a way that aligns with my principles. Stated another way, I try to treat the people I care about, including myself, in a principled way; e.g., with compassion and sincerity.
The practical application of values and principles is to align goals to the values, and to develop the system to actualize those goals based on principles. The values and goals are the “what,” whereas the principles and system are the “how.”
A few closing remarks
As I mentioned at the outset, this post is supposed to be part I of III. I’m currently planning to title the next two sections a deeper exploration of values and principles, and resources on habits, hobbies, and happiness, respectively. In part II, I hope to explain in greater detail how I developed my values and associated goals, as well as my principles and associated system. In part III, I plan to share some of the resources that inspired or informed this post, and take a closer look at some theories of habits, hobbies, and happiness. For regular readers of my blog, this will feel like an expanded version of my “from the pros” section I sometimes end my posts with.
A few more words concerning this hobby of mine: I love expressing myself, and blogging is no exception for me. It is a hobby of mine, I might even call it a passion. Still, I’m one of those aforementioned people who feels like they “don’t have enough time,” at least some of the time. As we’ll get into later in part II, and as I touched on here in part I, I do have enough time for my most important values, and I am uncompromising on those values.
I’ve accepted that some things will just have to take a back seat, that I’ll only have a few hours per week to dedicate to certain activities, or it’ll take me a long time to complete a side project. For example, I probably started thinking about this post, just part I, as early as January. I started to take notes on what I would write about at least a few months ago. And I started drafting the actual post in late April. Two final points: (1) I can be patient with myself, and (2) it might be a while before anyone can read parts II or III.