Do Things That Aren’t Working, Watching TV, Eating Takeout, Or Drinking

“Work at your job and make a living. Work on yourself and make a fortune.”
 — Jim Rohn

For middle-class single people in their twenties and thirties, what society expects us to do is pretty clear. We’re expected to go to our nine-to-five job, work, go home after work and watch TV/play video games/maybe exercise a bit, go out with friends for dinner and drinks, and use Tinder to hopelessly go on date after date, occasionally hooking up with people along the way.

As a result, most middle-class singles in their twenties and thirties have the same thing: a job that is all right, but not the job of their dreams; a list of hobbies we’d like to take up that we never do; a takeout and alcohol budget that we know is a little too large; and a love life that simultaneously takes up too much time without much reward.

Ask someone with this life how they feel about this, and they’ll tell you that while it’s not too bad, they want more. They want a job they feel passionate about. They want to be fit, energetic, and healthy. They want money in their savings accounts. They want a romantic relationship that is deeply rewarding, easy, and worthwhile.

The way to get these things is not by doing what everyone else does. If you spend your time doing what everyone else does — working, watching TV, playing video games, going out to eat, and scrolling Tinder — you’re going to get what everyone else gets — dissatisfaction, loneliness, and a nagging feeling that there’s something more out there for you, if only you knew what it was.

If you want something different, you have to do something different.

People are where they are in life as a result of their decisions. People who spend their time watching TV get what people who spend their time watching TV get — a mind that is sluggish and a body that struggles to get off the couch. Conversely, people who spend their time exercising instead of watching TV are fit, energetic, and healthy.

People with jobs they love, people who travel often, and people with great relationships didn’t just get lucky. They make productive decisions, decisions with positive outcomes. Instead of spending their time doing the same-old same-old, they decided to do something different than the rest.

Once you realize this, you realize that you aren’t the victim of outside circumstances. You can choose what to do; you can choose what results you get.

My favorite demonstration of this concept is a Rick and Morty episode called Pickle Rick. For those of you who watch the show, you know the exact episode I’m talking about, but for those who don’t, a brief explanation follows.

In Pickle Rick, genius scientist Rick Sanchez avoids having to attend family therapy with his daughter, granddaughter, and grandson by turning himself into a pickle, rendering him unable to attend therapy. Rick devised a system that would turn him back into a human as soon as the family left for therapy, but his daughter took the anti-pickle serum from this system before leaving. Rick is stuck as a pickle, with no way to defend himself or restore himself to humanity.

After being thrown down a sewer by a cat, using bug brains to craft a rudimentary exoskeleton, and engaging in bloody conflict (this is a cartoon), he eventually makes his way to family therapy as a pickle so he can get the anti-pickle serum before he dies.

There, the therapist confronts him.

Rick, the only connection between your unquestionable intelligence and the sickness destroying your family is that everyone in your family, you included, use intelligence to justify sickness. You seem to alternate between viewing your own mind as an unstoppable force and as an inescapable curse. And I think it’s because the only truly unapproachable concept for you is that it’s your mind within your control. You chose to come here, you chose to talk, to belittle my vocation, just as you chose to become a pickle. You are the master of your universe, and yet you are dripping with rat blood and feces. Your enormous mind literally vegetating by your own hand.

The circumstances are fantastical — none of us will ever turn ourselves into pickles — but the lesson is very real: we suffer or we thrive not based on the whims of a cold universe, but because of the kinds of choices we make for ourselves.

I’m not advocating you turn into some kind of productivity machine. The American workweek is already too long, and I’m not interested in making the problem worse. Humans didn’t evolve to be constant productivity machines. We evolved to live balanced lives, lives with work and play, effort and relaxation. To that end, rest and relaxation are critical to our well-being.

But most “relaxation” isn’t relaxing. When people watch TV, play video games, or binge-scroll social media, they tell themselves they’re relaxing, but they’re not. Forgive me for quoting myself:

The thing about entertainment is that while it often superficially feels relaxing, it is neurologically not relaxing at all. It’s a pipeline of ultra-high stimulation directly to your sensory cortices, a rainbow technicolor light show for your brain. This produces a sedative effect similar to that of the high of cannabis, where you feel as if you’re being relaxed, but in reality, are experiencing more stimulation than usual.

Ask yourself: When you realize you’ve spent the last 45 minutes scrolling Facebook, do you feel refreshed and relaxed? Do you feel revitalized, ready to take on your day? Probably not. Back when I used social media, I certainly never did. What I felt after a social media binge was similar to a hangover, a vague sense of feeling sick to my stomach, lethargic, and a little stupider than usual.

False relaxation helps you press the pause button on life. True relaxation helps you center yourself, live in the moment, and find peace with what is.

None of this is to say we have complete control. It would be foolish to say that. If we had complete control, I would tell Medium’s Forge to pick up this article — or better yet, I’d tell The New York Times to pick up this article — and every article I write after.

But our decisions do matter. I can’t decide whether Medium will feature a particular article I write, but it’s true that the more articles I write, the more likely it is Medium will feature an article, and I can decide whether I’m going to write today.

This is true for more than our careers. You can’t control whether a particular exercise, diet, or workout routine is going to get you the results you’re looking for. But you know if you try enough diets, or do enough exercise, you will eventually find something that works for you, and you can control whether you give up before you find what works.

You can’t control whether a particular person falls in love with you — but you can control whether you’re the kind of person someone would fall in love with. You can control the decision to either accept yourself for who you are and see who comes along or to play games and try to “score”. If you decide to give up the games and celebrate yourself for who you are, your chances of falling for someone who falls for you go way up.

Do It Yourself

Take a look at your own life. What areas of your life do you wish were better?

• Do you wish you had a job you liked more?
• Do you wish you had more close friends?
• Do you wish you were more fit?
• Do you wish you had more energy every day?

For every area of weakness you want to focus on, ask yourself why it is an area of weakness.

• If you wish you could work from home, why don’t you have a job where you can work from home? Is it because you lack the kind of skills most work-from-home jobs demand? Is it because you don’t perform well while working from home?
• If you wish you were more fit, why aren’t you? Is it because going to the gym always feels like a monumental effort you’re not willing to make? Is it because you can’t afford a gym membership? Is it because you don’t have the time to get fit?

Lastly, for every roadblock, devise a way to change that.

• If you’re lacking the skills you need to work from home, decide to learn them in your spare time. Teach yourself how to code using Codecademy. If it’s because you end up getting distracted, design an environment where you won’t get distracted. Put the TV away and block your social media. Decide to work instead.
• If it’s because you never have enough energy to go to the gym, make the following promise to yourself: I don’t have to work out there, but I have to go. Even if you walk in the door, turn around, and walk right back home, count it as a win. If it’s because you don’t have the time, find a solution like 12 Minute Athlete to get fit without investing much time — and instead of watching TV, do that.

The process looks like this:

1. Identify an area of weakness you want to improve.
2. Identify the decisions that are making it an area of weakness.
3. Identify decisions you could make instead that turn it into an area of strength.
4. Do whatever it takes to get those decisions to stick.

Follow this process, over and over and over, and you’ll start to see some pretty dramatic changes in your life.

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Author’s Note: This headline is a line from an article I read on Medium, but I can’t remember whose article it was. If you know, please let me know so I can credit the author properly. 🙂

EDIT: It was an Anthony Moore article. 🙂