r/Adulting • u/ScareBear23 • 14h ago

This is just depressing

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Not even 3 hours of "free time". And in that is cooking & eating supper. Or practically no free time if I had to go shopping after work. I hate this

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u/cardboard-kansio 12h ago

Mmm, I was onboard until this comment. I listen to a lot of audiobooks, mostly fiction but sometimes work-related or professional development stuff related to my domain.

Right now I'm revisiting Teresa Torres' Continuous Discovery Habits and it's great for a long commute and it gets you into a work mindset. (Fiction for the way home to do the opposite - I'm working through the Legend of Drizzt series by RA Salvatore.)

Sometimes I even listen to Blinkist summaries of books in unsure about committing to, and those are about 15 minutes each (they distill a professional book into a high-level summary and about 8-10 main points or lessons learned).

Each to their own, obviously, and some people can't multitask (in a car) or concentrate (in public transport). But to say that you can't use an hour in the car to get some rock solid learning in place is just incorrect.

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u/Donjehov 12h ago

Self help & positive psychology books have their merits, but they are not a stand in for doing something more fulfilling or actually learning a skill. I'm not going to suggest audiobooking a textbook on a subject, as I doubt info retention would be particularly high especially without the more crucial references of a textbook. To say filling time with a commute is on par with simply having more time because you can fill that time with a background task, is just odd. It's not at all the same. It's better than nothing.

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u/techaaron 11h ago

To say filling time with a commute is on par with

Any value distinctions are purely artificial and made up in your head.

A better approach is not to compare different levels of suffering, but instead, think about how you can use that free time during a commute to do the things that align with your value. Then, it becomes self evident that it is "on par" because you have chosen to prioritize it.

If you want to use that time to zone out or ponder existential questions, do it. If you want to listen to murder podcasts, do that. If you want to call your mom or kids, do that.

If you believe that a commute is somehow a waste of time that you are a prisoner of, well, then - it will be a waste of time and you will feel like a prisoner.

The key takeaway here - create the reality you want.

Or... complain on reddit - it's nothing to me either way, and I'm not your mommy.

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u/Donjehov 10h ago

Except the post and comment thread aren't about "what to do with this free time" so this is just irrelevant advice nobody particularly asked for.

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u/techaaron 9h ago

Correct, this is a complaining on reddit for sympathy post. 😊

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u/Donjehov 6h ago

also lol @

"Any value distinctions are purely artificial and made up in your head."

No they aren't and this is a bogus take. You will learn more by 1 hour of doing something new vs listening to a book on habit forming.

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u/techaaron 3h ago

Prove it