1,000 Hours of Free Time
My plan to give myself 1,000 hours of extra free time this year, and how you can do the same for yourself, if you are a recovering political junkie like me
How to give yourself 1,000 free hours
I want to share with you my plan to give myself 1,000 hours of extra free time, and how you can do the same for yourself, if you are a recovering political junkie like me—if not—you can probably apply this same idea to some other area in life, video games, tv, etc. This is an artist’s guide to surviving politics in the coming election year: ignore all of it as much as possible.
There is a great moment in Steven Pressfield’s book The War of Art, where he describes getting really into writing his first book. This was the turning point for him as a writer—when he became so committed to the craft that the news of the day faded into background noise.
“In my little house I had no TV. I never read a newspaper or went to a movie. I just worked. One afternoon I was banging away (on a typewriter) in the little bedroom I had converted into an office when I heard my neighbor’s radio playing outside. Someone in a loud voice was declaiming “. . . to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.” I came out. What’s going on? “Didn’t you hear? Nixon’s out; they got a new guy in there.”
I had missed Watergate completely.”
That’s what I basically want to do for the upcoming 2024 presidential campaign. Hell yeah, I’m going to cast my vote, and if anyone asks for my strongly held opinion, I’m happy to share it— and then I want to keep my head down, and do my work, and live my life.
How to go about doing that? I’m still figuring this out. But for me, a recovering political junkie, a news article is like a box of donuts for someone on a diet, or a six-pack of beer to a recovering alcoholic. I know that if I indulge even “just a little” it’s dangerous.
I’ve actually gone through a similar process with video games recently. To overcome my video game addiction—I deleted the apps that I found I was spending more time being annoyed with than happy with. It’s that simple. Of course, it’s easy to re-download them, and start the process over again. Just like if you’re someone trying to quit smoking it’s easy to throw away your pack of smokes and then walk right back down to the store and buy them again. This feels silly, and frustrating, but you should still do it! Each time you toss your cigs or booze or whatever the addiction is, down the drain and then have to walk all the way to the store you are slowing down the process. Destructive habits gain momentum just like positive ones. Anything that shifts the momentum towards the direction you want is worth doing. Eventually it will stick.
The wonderful thing about spending less time on something that doesn’t bring you joy is you can spend those hours elsewhere on something you actually enjoy. Kicking my video game veg-out-time has been pretty straight forward example of this. I used to spend probably 1-3 hours a day (it’s embarrassing to admit) on a dumb app on my phone. I’m too embarrassed to even name the app. Since I have deleted that app, I have re-invested that time into straight-up reading books. In the past couple months, I’ve gone from a video game on my phone as my go-to-way to unwind at the end of the day, to reading physical books. I now average about one book a week. It feels great! I feel more relaxed, happier about how I spend free time, and I feel like I just have more more intriguing thoughts in my head, which makes the world and life itself a bit more interesting.
Here are my 5 tips that I plan to follow to keep myself from going down the political rabbit hole of the 2024 election.
1. Don’t start your day with the news
This is actually the biggest one. If you just do one thing do this. It’s so damn easy to start getting sucked down different rabbit holes. Each article on the internet that you read links to 3 more, it is designed to be a hungry hydra that consumes all of your attention! Don’t’ engage, especially first thing in the morning. Make simple a no-news in the A.M rule—it’s a no-brainer. Your mornings are the most focused, potent part of your day, you should prioritize doing stuff that matters to you first thing in the morning.
2. Opt out of arguments
It takes two to tango, and it takes two people to argue about politics. I have a friend who is just so out of touch with reality, whenever he starts brings up politics I politely/firmly say, “I’m not interested in debating politics with you, Buddy.” Then I ignore whatever crazy stuff he says, I don’t take the bait and pretty soon his political rant runs out of steam. Political arguments need two people to fan the flames. It’s a game for suckers.
3. Set a News Limit
News flash: the less news you consume the happier you will feel! You can set a time limit, or an amount limit. Here is what works for me: I glance at the day’s headlines, and then I allow myself one article. Usually this is the headline article, but if it’s something else I’m curious about that day, that’s fine. This takes maybe 15 minutes. (Honestly, I’m considering consuming even less.)
4. Ignore the Bogeyman = Shrinks the Bogeyman
Trump is a sort of bogeyman, he gets his power as much from the hate and fear (attention) that he is able to stoke as from the attention he gets from his supporters. The opposite of what he thrives on is simply indifference. Skillfully “Letting go” is a Zen way to defuse the whole situation. I believe humans really are all interconnected by just a few degrees of separation. By spending your time doing things that you love and enjoy and bring happiness into the world, you’re accomplishing much more than you would by pushing back against hate and anger with hate and anger.
Beyond a reasonable (small) amount of attention, worrying and freaking-out about the 24-hour news-cycle does only harm. Imagine frying an egg. It is a pretty simple process to that; you crack the egg in the pan, heat, and at some point, you flip the egg over. The sane approach to frying an egg is pretty minimal. Sure, you keep an eye on the egg—but anxiously pacing back-and-forth, wringing your hands, reading articles about fried eggs, none of that, no matter how much feeling you put into it—will make one tittle of difference in how the egg turns out. Your stress is extraneous to the outcome.
5. Get Obsessed: with something healthier
One of the best ways to overcome an obsession is by replacing it with a healthier obsession. The thing about addictions is they are all relative. When I quit smoking, I let myself get completely addicted to chewing gum. I’m still quite addicted to gum, that’s fine by me! It’s not going to kill me.
My friend Zach became obsessed with woodworking during the pandemic, and in just a few years he’s gone from being brand new at woodworking to turning out beautiful hand-crafted furniture. He is now teaching woodworking classes, and is about to open up a woodshop. When I asked him the secret to his rapid growth as a craftsman he said “Oh, I’m completely obsessed.” His obsession has turned into a earning a living doing what he loves to do.
As I write this there are about 500 days until the 2024 presidential election. I think it’s actually not that far-fetched to imagined someone obsessed with tracking the news, between news articles, and tv, radio, podcasts, social media etc. easily spending 2, 3 hours a day on the news. That’s at least a thousand hours. You get one vote in an election. But you can spend those one thousand hours on anything you want! Besides the one vote that you cast, paying attention to the 24/7 media cycle won’t change the outcome any more or less than Steven Pressfield missing out on the Watergate scandal changed the destiny of Richard Nixon.
Imagine taking the 1 or 2 (or much more) hours a day you might easily squander tracking the political campaign of 2024, and getting all worked up, bent out of shape, and pissed off about it, and now imagine putting all those hours into a different obsession that is healthy for you—whether that is woodworking or writing, or music, or painting, from playing piano, or pickle ball, learning a new language, you name it!