Unproductive

For the past 2 months, I've been rather unproductive. Unproductive in the sense that I haven't been doing anything worthy of having a positive or memorable impact upon myself. During the weekdays, I come home at about 7 pm (squeezing about 1.25 hours of overtime), whipping out some dinner while I surf the net or play computer games until about 10 pm. After that, I start scouring the net for economic data or reports (most of which are garbage) before it hits 11:30 pm here, which is perfectly the time when the NYSE opens and I watch what happens until about about 12:30 am before I goto bed.

On weekends, my days are usually filled with gatherings. Events that I mostly get invited out to and I oblige, usually heading out in the evenings to meet up with people whom I seem to meet only from time to time for dinner or drinks. Sometimes I meet some interesting people, but I only keep occasional contact with them. When it comes to meeting people, something seems markedly different from the experiences I've had in the past. Now that I look at it, the environment in which I meet people has changed rather drastically. But I'll talk about that in a different post.

Suffice to say, I haven't been doing anything of real significance lately and my time is being poorly spent.

Dealing with the Urge to do nothing

I have to say that I am fortunate that I live close to work. I can wake up at 8:20 and still check in by 8:59 after changing, eating breakfast, reading a little news and then brushing my teeth before a brisk paced walk from my room to the office. Compared to other people that have to commute by train and spend about 30-40 minutes a day on travel, I save at least a productive hour everyday. The only problem is that the only thing that I've found my self doing with it is goofing off and that is going to have to stop, and that is going to be thepoint of this post.

There are a variety of things that I would like to do but just end up having "no time for it". I'd have to say that having "no time" is a terrible excuse because I am quite sure that most people have time in general somewhere that can be allocated to doing something productive.

I do believe that people in general are programmed to operate on their urges. Whether be it determining when it's time to eat, sleep, watch TV and etc. The problem with I think is the programming of our urges, since being young-- most of us have not been trained or programmed while young to be self-productive, or perhaps have the urge to do things that have a positive impact on ourselves. Instead, I believe that most of us shun the work or effort required to be productive and squander it by finding ways of killing time, which seems to me to be a rather slow form of suicide-- killing time is like killing yourself; second by second.

I think that most of this poor mental programming comes from school, by some how learning that studying, work, exercising or activities that are supposed to be "good for you" is a chore. The problem with this is that it leaves a bitter taste of doing things that are "good for you" in one's mental mouth making people less inclined to be self-productive and find ways of avoiding such activities.

It is perhaps one of the reasons that entertainment has become such an important part of most people's lives; it becomes quite obvious from looking at my entertainment expenditures in my annual budget.

Hard work shouldn't be painful

I don't believe that hard work should be painful. But it seems to be the way people are taught to think about it; if you're working hard at something, then you're probably exerting a lot of will power doing something that you don't like. It is quite rare to find anyone hard at work at something they really like. Work has that kind of image, it's something that "pays the bills;" it's just something that helps keep you alive.

People generally should work hard on things that they enjoy. The other important thing that people should be able to do is work hard at things that have a direct positive impact on their lives. There is a reason people exercise, or study languages, build things and etc. And what causes people to do these things is motivation.

The unfortunate thing is that most motivation that encourages us to do these things are somehow related to pain. "Study or else you're not going to pass your test," or "Work your job or else you'll get fired" or something of that variety. It is something of a rather sad trait of our modern society.

I believe that a life is much better lived if motivations sounded like "I studied math because I thought it was interesting," or "I grow strawberries because I like their taste." It is far too rare for me to find people doing the things they want to do. And I think that is sad.

Wrong Obligations

I am starting to believe now that we've been taught to live by the wrong obligations; the idea that we have to be whipped into being educated to take up a job that we probably won't like so we take on the heavy burden buying a house and then raise children to do the same thing.

There is a better way of living and it's finding the things that you enjoy and having the freedom to pursue them. But the problem is that most people don't even have a chance to get there, because we've all been told that we've got to work hard at the things that we don't like to live a decent life.

Most people live this way because they know that they can survive doing this. The sad thing is that most people will likely never have the courage to take the risk to find a way to make a living doing something they enjoy. And I think that's the whole problem with it all, most people just can't find enough positive motivation to do something they really enjoy, because somehow we've setup too many mental barriers to do it.

I'm tired and I've flipped back through my post. I'm totally rambling. It's been too long since I've done a real post. I need to get back into it again.