• Notes
  • So many possibilities and options and inputs, that it’s easier to always be looking out for something new. Instead of doing something, which can be hard and unpleasant and boring and uncertain, it’s easier to always be on the lookout for the new thing that might make us feel good. Something that might feel like the One Thing I should really be doing with my life.
  • ExQ Test
    • 
  • The Stories Checklist
    • Story
      • Inward and outward identity
      • Leads to other areas of happiness (e.g. stories can help us have conversations that build relationships)
      • Actor, Agent, Author
      • The redemption story is more compelling than the contamination story
      • “What’s the lesson I’m supposed to take from this test? Who’s the ally I’m supposed to find? How can I learn to deal with this type of enemy better?”
      • [[Joseph Campbell]]
      • [[Christopher Volger]]
      • [[Clive Williams]]
      • Just because things have gone wrong doesn’t mean you’ve gone wrong.
    • Transformation
      • Growth
    • Outside & Offline
      • Spending time in nature is good for you
      • Lower heart rate, blood pressure, stress; improve mood
      • See: [[The Nature Fix]]
    • Relationships
      • Relationships are key to wellbeing
      • friends, family, neighbours and community
      • 80-year Harvard study
      • Excerpt From
      • Time and How to Spend It
      • James Wallman
      • This material may be protected by copyright.
    • Intensity
      • Need challenge, improvement, and learning
      • See: [[Flow (book)]]
    • Extraordinary
      • Memorable experiences
      • Produce happiness when we look forward to them and when we look back on them
    • Status & Significance
      • Improving our status does make us happier, especially if we do it through generosity
• [[Nebo]] The Hero’s Journey
  • The idea is to interpret your life in terms of the
  • hero’s journey. What events or feelings might be a
  • call to adventure? Who are your allies and enemies? What are trials for you to overcome? Lessons to learn? thresholds to cross?
  • Instead of getting annoyed at challenges, or at people at work, how can you interpret them as trials to overcome and grow from? In any situation, ask yourself, "What is the lesson I’m supposed to learn from this?
  • Maybe this would be a helpful view for me to adopt for
  • two reasons:
    • 1. It could help me fight the tendency to see myself as an observer in my own life.
    • 2. It could help me remain emotionally distant from challenges or from people who aren’t acting the way I think they should.
• Checklist
  • 
• Author:: [[James Wallman]]
• Full Title:: Time and How to Spend It
• Category:: [[books]]

• Highlights first synced by [[Readwise]] [[October 31st, 2020]]

  • To live the best life, it’s clear we require three ingredients: happiness, success and resilience. The most direct route to achieving all three is through not only experiences but the right kind of experiences – not junk, empty, bullshit ones, but healthy, nurturing, exciting ones that are more likely to supply the vital bricks for enduring happiness and success
  • Instead of getting annoyed by people and any other sort of thing in his way, he’d ask himself, ‘What’s the lesson I’m supposed to take from this test? Who’s the ally I’m supposed to find? How can I learn to deal with this type of enemy better?’
  • When we’re playing with our kids in the park, we check Facebook and the football scores. When we’re hanging out with one group of friends, we post pictures to show another. But multitasking doesn’t do any good for your free time either. It makes it worse. Sociologists even have a nasty name for the thing you get if you multitask: ‘contaminated time’.
  • Time and How to Spend It – A 7-point Summary So Far We have more leisure time than ever, but it doesn’t feel like that. We don’t feel like we have much leisure time because we’re misspending it. We’re misspending it because our society has placed a high value on work and a low value on leisure. Because of this, we’ve been trained how to work, but haven’t learned how to live. Knowing how to live has become more difficult, and more important, today: because of the Internet and our always-on, always-there devices; because there are more things than ever to do in today’s experience economy. Misspending our time is like winning the lottery, but only taking some of the winnings. If we learn how to spend our leisure time, we can use our time better, and access previously untapped reserves of happiness.
  • The popular assumption is that no skills are involved in enjoying free time, and that anybody can do it. Yet the evidence suggests the opposite: free time is more difficult to enjoy than work. Having leisure at one’s disposal does not improve the quality of life unless one knows how to use it effectively, and it is by no means something one learns automatically.’
  • Story, Transformation, Outside & Offline, Relationships, Intensity, Extraordinary and, finally, Status & Significance.
  • ‘How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.’

Annie Dillard - if you want to be happy, you should spend more of your focus and money on experiences - The best sort of success, ultimate success, includes happiness. The best sort of happiness includes success. - being able to handle tough times and bounce back is not only essential for happiness, it’s also key for success - people who, in the scientific jargon, have ‘emotional health’ or display ‘positive affect’ – that is, people who you and I would just say are happy – are more likely to succeed. - there’s an endless ocean of possibilities, both digital and in the real world. Just as there’s always something new to read or watch online, so there are more things than ever to keep up with and visit and try out – new festivals, restaurants, pop-up bars, and cities that are now only a short flight away. The comparison between what we can do and what others are doing, versus what we are doing, is making us anxious - ‘How successful are you? Answer: how resilient are you?’ If you read the American Psychological Association (APA) advice on the ten ways to increase your resilience – like the importance of relationships, self-discovery and moving towards your goals – they fit almost hand-in-glove with some of the key reasons why scientists say experiences are good at making us happy. Because they bring us closer to other people, for instance, because they give us a chance to define who we are, and because they challenge us. - Capitalism cares about work, productivity and GDP. So schools and universities and night-schools and online courses focus on teaching us how to be more productive and efficient at work. Too few bother to explain how we should spend our free time any more. They think that knowing how to work is essential, but knowing how to live is a frivolous luxury: the sort of thing that feckless social dilettantes, born with silver spoons in their mouths and with more time and money than sense, wasted their time on in the nineteenth century. So we all end up thinking that leisure is trivial and doesn’t require any special training - Bad experiences aren’t islands, set adrift from the rest of our lives. They’re not like clothes in your wardrobe. If you throw a memory out, you lose more than just that one memory. The bad are usually connected to the good, and to something else besides: lessons we’ve learned, who we were, who we are, who we want to be.

• Author:: [[James Wallman]]
• Full Title:: Time and How to Spend It
• Category:: [[books]]

• Highlights first synced by [[Readwise]] [[November 1st, 2020]]

  • p. vii

    • ‘How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.’

Annie Dillard (Page 0) - # Eternal Sunshine for Your Spotless Mind - Bad experiences aren’t islands, set adrift from the rest of our lives. They’re not like clothes in your wardrobe. If you throw a memory out, you lose more than just that one memory. The bad are usually connected to the good, and to something else besides: lessons we’ve learned, who we were, who we are, who we want to be. (Page 3) - there’s an endless ocean of possibilities, both digital and in the real world. Just as there’s always something new to read or watch online, so there are more things than ever to keep up with and visit and try out – new festivals, restaurants, pop-up bars, and cities that are now only a short flight away. The comparison between what we can do and what others are doing, versus what we are doing, is making us anxious (Page 7) - When we’re playing with our kids in the park, we check Facebook and the football scores. When we’re hanging out with one group of friends, we post pictures to show another. But multitasking doesn’t do any good for your free time either. It makes it worse. Sociologists even have a nasty name for the thing you get if you multitask: ‘contaminated time’. (Page 7) - Capitalism cares about work, productivity and GDP. So schools and universities and night-schools and online courses focus on teaching us how to be more productive and efficient at work. Too few bother to explain how we should spend our free time any more. They think that knowing how to work is essential, but knowing how to live is a frivolous luxury: the sort of thing that feckless social dilettantes, born with silver spoons in their mouths and with more time and money than sense, wasted their time on in the nineteenth century. So we all end up thinking that leisure is trivial and doesn’t require any special training (Page 8) - The popular assumption is that no skills are involved in enjoying free time, and that anybody can do it. Yet the evidence suggests the opposite: free time is more difficult to enjoy than work. Having leisure at one’s disposal does not improve the quality of life unless one knows how to use it effectively, and it is by no means something one learns automatically.’ (Page 16) - Time and How to Spend It – A 7-point Summary So Far We have more leisure time than ever, but it doesn’t feel like that. We don’t feel like we have much leisure time because we’re misspending it. We’re misspending it because our society has placed a high value on work and a low value on leisure. Because of this, we’ve been trained how to work, but haven’t learned how to live. Knowing how to live has become more difficult, and more important, today: because of the Internet and our always-on, always-there devices; because there are more things than ever to do in today’s experience economy. Misspending our time is like winning the lottery, but only taking some of the winnings. If we learn how to spend our leisure time, we can use our time better, and access previously untapped reserves of happiness. (Page 20) - people who, in the scientific jargon, have ‘emotional health’ or display ‘positive affect’ – that is, people who you and I would just say are happy – are more likely to succeed. (Page 25) - if you want to be happy, you should spend more of your focus and money on experiences (Page 26) - ‘How successful are you? Answer: how resilient are you?’ If you read the American Psychological Association (APA) advice on the ten ways to increase your resilience – like the importance of relationships, self-discovery and moving towards your goals – they fit almost hand-in-glove with some of the key reasons why scientists say experiences are good at making us happy. Because they bring us closer to other people, for instance, because they give us a chance to define who we are, and because they challenge us. (Page 27) - being able to handle tough times and bounce back is not only essential for happiness, it’s also key for success (Page 27) - The best sort of success, ultimate success, includes happiness. The best sort of happiness includes success. (Page 29) - (Page 29) - To live the best life, it’s clear we require three ingredients: happiness, success and resilience. The most direct route to achieving all three is through not only experiences but the right kind of experiences – not junk, empty, bullshit ones, but healthy, nurturing, exciting ones that are more likely to supply the vital bricks for enduring happiness and success (Page 29) - Story, Transformation, Outside & Offline, Relationships, Intensity, Extraordinary and, finally, Status & Significance. (Page 40) - Instead of getting annoyed by people and any other sort of thing in his way, he’d ask himself, ‘What’s the lesson I’m supposed to take from this test? Who’s the ally I’m supposed to find? How can I learn to deal with this type of enemy better?’ (Page 66)