Spending much of your time watching documentary films or reading does not necessarily waste them; it is when you don’t make time to actualize knowledge, visions, and dreams you have acquired that make you unproductive. When you are stuck, for example, in the looping habit of video games or, let’s say, stuck in reading and contemplating on different theories for a longer period of time and found no results for these activities, maybe it is time for you to take real actions to change the situation. Many of us engage ourselves in escapism habit just to have instant fulfillment by simulating the experiences. However, this will not truly replace the missing pieces we are looking for in our lives.
One reason we indulge in escapism habits is that it offers instant gratification and shut us out from the difficult and frightening void that we must be confronting. Binging on things such as Youtube, TV or internet series, social media, music, video games, porn, and even gambling and alcohol only offer temporary relief and false sense of satisfaction and achievement. It also gives us an illusory façade of social life and validation. However, these things cannot give us the real essence of experiences as they only simulates the experiences that we are supposed to be having in real life; none of these things can bring the real benefits of such vital experiences as it will not provide you the actuality of having a healthy relationship, good friends, useful knowledge, circle of friends, etc., thus, still make you feel hollow and empty inside.
One thing to do to stop this is to invest our time on long term delayed gratification habits. These will give us long lasting fulfillments such as starting a business, learning new skills that are useful in life, engaging in a fulfilling relationship (if this is what you want), and other things that require actual effort to be enjoyed or strived for. For example, instead of buffering or avoiding rejection through porn and masturbation, you must stop being afraid and approach a woman. Some claimed that men’s brain have evolved to be so afraid of rejection. If this is true, then we must try to do something about it.
The next thing we must minimize or avoid is spending too much time on video games, movies, and series. Although these things help us in dealing with our anxieties and depressions, they also kill our motivation and will only make us more stuck on our fantasies and unrealistic perceptions. They also make us miss the important moments of our lives. We will be held captive, physically and psychologically, by these media for long hours instead of us going out and meeting and socializing with real people. In addition, video games give us the illusion of accomplishing something big which is actually an easy or even false achievement. Instead of being unproductive, we must stop indulging in too much dopamine and go out and invest our time on something important for ourselves or for others.
The last thing we must avoid is the consumption of useless information. Just like most of the movies and series on the internet today, these things do not really hold relevance to our lives and will only waste our time and effort in the long run. Yes, they entertain us, but spending hours to these platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and other mindless useless clickbait videos will only produce us junk in the end, stealing our time to, let’s say, read good books or listen to audiobooks and podcasts that talk about important topics.
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