I find often that when someone says “I don’t have the time”, what they really mean is that they don’t have energy left to take on something else.
In my case, I find that there’s often enough hours, but I don’t always have the energy to be active 100% of that time and just end up taking some rest.
-- Bertrand Russell, http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html
The biggest issue, of course, is that it requires you to experiment with new things when you’re dead tired in order to figure out what helps in the first place. A more subtle problem is that some activities help at first and then cause problems later- Television/YouTube is like this for me; sometimes, it’s the most effective way of resting but if I’m not careful I’ll go straight through energetic into a different, harder to escape lethargy.
I had after-school routine. When I was comming back from school I was bored and tired but too bored and not tired enough to go to sleep immediately. So I watched TV for an hour or two becomming slightly less bored and completely tired. After that I slept for few hours and after that wake up and be semi-funtional human again, able to do homework or enjoy myself for a bit.
The problem was I got addicted to TV and I watched it even if I wasn't that tired and theoretically had energy to entertain myself with something that had better joy/effort ratio than TV. Instead I always defaulted to TV which costed me too much energy for enjoyment provided.
Eventually I had to ask my mom to put a parental lock on TV and even then after school I was lying in front of turned on TV that showed no channel (due to parental lock) pushing buttons at random trying to unlock it. I even managed to unlock it once (3 digit code) but couldn't repeat it.
Eventually my dumb brain learned that lying in front of a TV no longer gives me any joy (because I can't turn the channels on) and I shook the addiction.
The problem is that it’s effective for such a large range of needs, it promotes the illusion that, if you only found the right thing to watch, it can fix anything. So you end up channel surfing, wondering why you can’t find anything you’re interested in, when what you really need is a stroll outside.
Yes. I totalle agree. I think social was most important for me. The problem with TV is that it fulfills those needs but very inefficiently. It takes a lot of time of lying inert in front of TV to get any significant fulfillment. And the insidious part is that because people are lying down they think they are resting. But that's rarely true. Lying down especially for hours tires you even more.
So TV provides you with versatile fulfillment but at very slow rate and at a significant cost that's not easy to notice.
My last year was terrible, and I had developed the habit of watching video as way to self-soothe. I wasn't really enjoying it or getting anything out of it, so when my major source of stress ended, I decided to kick the TV/Netflix/Prime habit. For all of June, I eliminated it and video games.
It was hard at first, but it has been great. When June ended I was curious to see if I'd pick those back up. So far, nothing. It turns out if I let myself be bored, it will drive me to do something more interesting.
And while I agree that taking care of one self is important, I want to touch upon a more fundamental point. I am perfectly OK with taking rest from time to time, or taking it easy, or just sitting back with my feet up enjoying a good book, or a glass of wine with my wife. There's in my opinion little need to always be on 100% and it's perfectly OK if people aren't. I know this opinion is like cursing in church on this forum, but many people would do well being nice to themselves a little more.
That's freeing in a way, it tells me that when I feel pressed for time it's really all in my head and taking an hour to read a book shouldn't be a problem if I just take a few minutes and prioritize my time.
Also it's probably useful for some people to see how much time is spent on work and commuting relative to other parts of their life. If they truly have no time to read a book but work+commute is eating up more than 50% of their days, maybe it's time to do something about that and fix one or both parts of that equation (move closer to work or change jobs to get closer to home, and work fewer hours)?
Then there is (on top of above) the vitamins / minerals category, in which I was shocked to find that most supplements out there are in a form that doesn't get used by the body. Sorry, no english doc here :(
Addressing my various food intolerances - it's very personal and it's more about the process. Experimenting with avoiding gluten, milk, egg (for me). Try-and-repeat. Be consistent (this was the hardest for me).
And fighting my constant virus load - again, very personal, but these ones that work for me, using in combination: lactoferrin, grapefruit seed extract, ganoderma lucidum mushroom, propolis drops, and one I won't write down on HN because I get downvoted for it... :)