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Pockets of Freedom
My normal days begin at 4:00 am, and I’m often awake earlier than that. Several of my friends think I’m crazy. Considering I go to bed after 10:00 pm most nights, I don’t have much of a counter-argument to the crazy theory.
I’m not here to brag about how much I get done in an 18-hour day. Truth is, I waste a lot of time. At regular intervals, I find myself squandering away an hour or more scrolling through social media without any object in mind. For a time, I removed all social media apps from my phone, but found myself bored again and reinstalled them.
Rinse and repeat.
There’s a bit of buzz right now about replacing doom-scrolling with microlearning. At the Association for Talent Development, they define microlearning as something that “enhances learning and performance in the most efficient and effective manner possible through short pieces of content.”
Phrasing there makes it sound like microlearning is the most efficient and effective manner available for learning. It’s not a valid assumption, but serves to drive their point home. Truth is, there’s not a one-size-fits-most way to learn.
But this isn’t just about learning in place of doom-scrolling either.
I’m consistently inconsistent at keeping a daily planner.
In the illustration, I give the appearance of having every minute of the day planned out. There’s a lot of opportunity in there, however — opportunities to make better use of the time I’ve been given.
I’m not advocating the message of efficiency gurus. Many of them try to portray themselves as not actual humans, but machines making the highest and best use of every minute of every day.
As actual humans, allowing ourselves a modest amount of unstructured downtime is critical to mental health. This downtime necessarily includes good, wholesome entertainment and recreational activities. You don’t have to be a psychologist or brain scientist to experience and understand the great effects of just moving your body.
