I found that what reduced my low-value leisure time most was doing something incredibly fun, by explicitly optimizing for it. Then when I went back to i.e. reading webcomics, it seemed mildly repulsive in that it wasn’t actually that fun.
I suspect, but am not sure that, having a large amount of fun when you have fun
1) Reduces the amount of time you’ll spend having fun, in that it satiates your quota earlier.
2) Causes you to consciously choose how much leisure time to have, because it’s hard to default into really fun behaviors as procrastination.
I also tried
1) allowing myself to do anything I wanted, as long as I planned it at least half an hour in advance (if you have a pre-set quitting time this could help?)
2) Setting a timer to interrupt every 15 minutes and ask me what I was doing. One of my main problems was cost-insensitivity to time; playing a computer game for 5 hours did not feel almost any more a waste of time than doing it for 1 hour.
Please let me know if any of these work, so I know whether to recommend them to others in the future.
I found that what reduced my low-value leisure time most was doing something incredibly fun, by explicitly optimizing for it. Then when I went back to i.e. reading webcomics, it seemed mildly repulsive in that it wasn’t actually that fun. I suspect, but am not sure that, having a large amount of fun when you have fun 1) Reduces the amount of time you’ll spend having fun, in that it satiates your quota earlier. 2) Causes you to consciously choose how much leisure time to have, because it’s hard to default into really fun behaviors as procrastination.
I also tried 1) allowing myself to do anything I wanted, as long as I planned it at least half an hour in advance (if you have a pre-set quitting time this could help?) 2) Setting a timer to interrupt every 15 minutes and ask me what I was doing. One of my main problems was cost-insensitivity to time; playing a computer game for 5 hours did not feel almost any more a waste of time than doing it for 1 hour.
Please let me know if any of these work, so I know whether to recommend them to others in the future.