I thought I would have accomplished a lot more today and also before I was 35

I read this and remembered a plan I had journaled when I was 30 years old. I was working in a stratified IT department that I liked pretty well and had mapped out a plan to be at director level by age 40. I left that organization at age 33, took a short term position and then one I liked even better, putting me in a lead role that could have led to something director-like. Then the company laid off most of my team and I took off. Now I am in an individual contributor position again and have just turned 40. Many times, life works against plans and it's better not to get too attached to them. Other things are accomplished in the meantime that may not look like much but in the bigger scheme, are quite meaningful.

No offense but why are you on social media at all lol.

>I haven't set an alarm for work in years, can buy what I want without too much consideration, mostly work when I feel like it, and the work I do is often interesting.

You are doing better than 99% of people who have ever lived!

> the busier they get, the more active they are at other tasks.

Not at all my experience. I hate not feeling unproductive and so spend almost 100% of my free time programming open source projects. But I seem to be unable to care about anything else, and there are long periods of time where I cabnot bring myself to do anything else besides keep working on these projects until 2 in the morning - so-called hyperfocus. As a result I keep feeling exhausted when it comes to anything besides working on said projects, and the first thing I do when not thinking of anything is to gravitate back to them at the expense of everything else. The most trivial things like cleaning my room or even eating a proper lunch become an unbearable slog if I'm in the middle of something important, and sometimes I just skip over them entirely.

I believe this is making me a shallow person because I have no understanding of literally anything else, and is also keeping me in this bubble where there's so much more to life which would be fulfilling that I will never see, but at the same time I just can't bring myself to care about much else that isn't a productive activity. I can't have it both ways, even though I constantly say I should be doing things that aren't productive like playing video games or watching television, and then shoot them down immediately because I feel like I'm not creating anything. I will tell myself that those are the kind of things that humanity usually squanders its free time on, and that I'm not about to fall into that trap.

In the example, if someone gave me that paper to fill out while I was busy and I don't care about filling out the paper, I wouldn't fill out the paper. Not unless my paycheck and continued survival depend on it.

It does not feel like I chose my hobbies, it feels like they chose me.

It is not just spending time on those sites/apps, it's the pressure society puts on them to get to the next step on the ladder. Perfect houses on Instagram. 24yo making 300K on Blind. 18yo on Youtube making 1M+. Even if you don't want to compare yourself to others, comparisons are everywhere. That adds cognitive load to the slow grind of getting started on a new job, and now 8 hours feel like 12, and at the same time the productivity trends tell them they "have not done enough today".

Viewing this as business productivity versus distractions is a false dichotomy, though.

Life isn't just a series of context switches between being productive at work and wasting time at home. The goal is to be intentional with how you spend your time.

For example, coordinating a social dinner with friends isn't work, but it also isn't a waste of time. Going to the gym isn't typical productivity, but it isn't a waste of time either. Even playing video games to catch of with old friends isn't entirely a waste of time.

However, the modern world is full of traps that will lull people into spending their time in ways that feel enjoyable in the moment, but feel wasteful in retrospect. It's easy to pull out your phone and scroll Twitter for 30 minutes, but it takes more effort to pull out your phone and call and old friend or a grandparent for a check-in. It's easy to drop on the couch and select from an endless series of TV shows on Netflix and Hulu, but it takes a little more effort to go for a walk or go to the gym. Afterward, which of those two activities feels like a better use of your free time?

> The psychological rigidity and social sacrifices required of always being productive (with little to no unstructured leisure time)

Is this really a common goal, though? I've been around some extremely productive and successful people in my career, but none of them held any illusions about minimizing leisure time. I've also been in some high pressure and highly competitive environments, but the number of people who adopted an "all work and no play" approach to life was vanishingly small. In fact, the people who are most motivated at work are often most motivated to arrange the after-work get together, or the weekend trip for the group of friends, or to invite people over for home-cooked meals so we can catch up.