I live my life in symbiosis with PCs and laptops for work. In my spare time, I sometimes watch movies, and occasionally I play games. When I am not on holidays, which is most of the time, I sometimes say to myself that once I have a few days off, I am going to watch this or that movie that I wanted to watch for a while, such as The Lord of the Rings trilogy. The last time I watched it, it was on DVD and the resolution of that medium is quite subpar, so these movies are probably worth watching in 1080p. Similarly, I maintain a backlog of video games. I normally play short, skill-based 1990s or early-2000s arcade games that are brutally difficult, but there is the occasional modern game I intend to check out at some point.
The above is the idea. In reality, when my day does not start with flipping my laptop open early in the morning, I do not even spend an excessive amount of time in front of a screen. This summer, for instance, I spent a lot of time in nature, sometimes taking a spontaneous two-hour walk. Then there are some household chores and there also was some maintenance work in the garden. I even found myself preferring to do a few chores outside rather than playing some video game.
Observing my own behavior, it seems that I am more inclined to spend time in front of a computer after already having spent the working day the very same way. I wondered why that is the case. One hypothesis is that if working on your computer is your job, you may want to balance this by doing something fun on your computer. But perhaps the root cause is much simpler and it is due to habit or the path of least resistance. You just spent eight or nine hours in front of a screen, so why not spend one or two extra hours in front of a different screen?
The above is most certainly not a general observation. It holds in my case. It has happened quite often that I simply shelve my plan of playing through some game I had been looking forward to. The last big game I played was Dragon Quest XI. That was four years ago and not even during a vacation. Probably it also does not help that a playtime of 60 hours or more looks like a good chunk for my spare time for one to two months, and somehow this bothers me a bit more than it used to.
“But perhaps the root cause is much simpler and it is due to habit or the path of least resistance. You just spent eight or nine hours in front of a screen, so why not spend one or two extra hours in front of a different screen?”
I’ve found that whatever I start the day with sets the pattern for the rest of the day. If I get right to work on something, I usually have a productive day. If I start off reading random crap on the Internet or otherwise wasting time, I have a very hard time getting focused later. Maybe it’s that context switching thing again.
I think it’s interesting that Aaron brought this up. Looking at myself some 20 years ago, I used to be very into a computer game a lot. I also loved spending tons of time on an online forum. Nowadays, I still love going to forums, but not as frequently. As for games, I almost don’t play anymore. I really don’t know why; is it because I have matured, so games don’t hold the same attraction for me as before? Maybe I have outgrown computer games? I really don’t know. These days I find myself wanting to go into the real world much more so than I was when I was in my 20s. For example, I love going to the local mall and just walk around for like 2 hours, doing absolutely nothing. I also enjoy going to Bible studies (some of you might think this is boring, but surprisingly, it isn’t), and just generally spending time with real life people and talking to them.