People often talk about finding the right balance in life between work, socializing, romance, and other aspects of life. In practice, however, this can be very difficult to achieve. I tend to be an extremely focused person, and I find it very difficult to switch modes from working to socializing.
Lately, I have been in an extreme work mode. I have done nothing but research, programming, and other studies. Nonetheless, in an effort to strike a balance, I started making some more efforts to hang out with friends. This has quickly caused a change in my interests and priorities. I find it very difficult to have the psychological strength to focus on studying and programming while wanting to be social or interact with girls. For this reason, I find a proper balance very hard to achieve.
There may be hope however. To get things done and achieve, it has been shown that extreme focus is very valuable. Trying to incorporate some studying AND socializing into every day of the week will likely cause too much distraction for one or the other. So perhaps, it is best to entirely focus on studying and other intellectual pursuits during the week, and ONLY focus on socializing and fun stuff like watching movies or playing games during the weekend. If you have the strength, the commitment to this type of schedule may allow you to be extremely productive during the week while maximizing your social interactions on the weekend.
This schedule is in an effort to minimize the effects of a cyclic psychology. While it may seem tough to batch your time in such a way, it is important to remember that working for a whole week will likely increase the chances of obtaining flow in your work which will make you not care as much about socializing anyway. Also, knowing that you are committed to a schedule will make you feel pressure to capitalize on your time. The important thing is not to see the week as a sacrifice, with the reward of the weekend. As your work becomes a flow experience, your week should be just as rewarding as your weekend. It will be interesting to see if one can successfully implement this and find themselves enjoying and being more successful in both their work and social life.
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Another thing is that sometimes you may want to utilize your weekend time to work on a project. At that point it becomes really hard to balance when you only have two days to satisfy a weeks worth of socializing and project time. I tend to think that in some (perhaps rare) cases you should forget about balance and focus on the more important things first. But I am guessing that most of the time it is better to be balanced.
What do you think about my "Immortal Lifestyle" post?
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