Many of us take the Christmas break to unwind and recharge by living unscheduled for a week or so. But we deceive ourselves into thinking that the best way to relax is to do nothing: sit on the bed, relax, watch TV shows, and scroll through social.
This is a trap. A week of unscheduled living will do the opposite of unwinding and recharging. When the week comes to an end, you’ll be in a worse state of mind than when you began. The reason is that you’ve fallen into the trap of instant gratification. You can sleep in. You can binge-watch a whole series. You can scroll infinitely on social. You can aimlessly open tabs upon tabs on your browser thinking you’ll read the articles, yet never do.
Instant gratification is the road to mediocrity. You trick yourself into thinking that you’ve attained something when in reality you’ve attained nothing. Your short term dopamine feedback system is being hijacked to do things that don’t push you beyond your comfort zone. The desire to endlessly scroll on social is better directed at reading an actual book. The passivity of watching endlessly TikTok or YouTube is dangerous because you think you’re “learning” but you never do anything about it.
Live a scheduled life that’s action-oriented. i.e. if you learn something useful, go and implement it or write it down or do some research into it.