Recently deleted Instagram, Reddit and disabled YouTube shorts. I now noticed how much I miss doing something — like when sitting in the train or during breaks at work.
So what do you do with your idle time? Any suggestions?
Basically just anything I can while waiting for time to pass. I can’t get deeper into something, because there’s not enough time. Usually that ends up being walking back and forth and thinking, having a fake conversation in my head.
like when sitting in the train
I don’t consider that idle time, but a fun activity. I often take a train or bus nowhere. That means, as far as I can go and back. Or try to make my commute as long as possible. For example, I found nice connections allowing me to extend my commute from school from just 18km to 133km, and it’s only €0.90 more expensive.
Airline travel tactics, which for me is basically catching up on shows or watching movies. I’m used to starting and stopping a movie 10 times throughout the day and still enjoying it. Gotta have the downloaded though, that’s key.
I talk to you folks lol. I use this pretty much the same way I did Reddit. Something kinda brainless to scroll when I’m standing in line. And the more you comment, the more you have to read/do on here, so when I’m particularly bored, I talk more. I also don’t have any other social media.
I have a couple phone puzzle games I play. If I know I’m gonna be sitting like in a waiting room for a while, I’ll take a book with me. For the longer moments sitting at home, podcasts and music.
I’m almost constantly crafting something. I’ve been knitting for about 16 years and have picked up various other small/portable crafts along the way. I like to put a podcast on and listen while I keep my hands busy.
I am trying to reduce distractions and be more mindful of my surroundings. The sights, smells, and sounds of everything around me and my existence as part of it all.
It is still new to me and I find myself unconsciously getting my phone from my pocket and scrolling because it is boring. However, the effects I feel like reduced anxiety and depression are worth it. I also get to see things that I would miss if I were distracted by electronics.
Maybe practicing mindfulness could be beneficial for you as well.
Depends on how much idle time there is.
For short periods I spend my time just staring in the distance and letting my thoughts wander.
Commuting is spend either reading or here online. Maybe a Youtube video once in a while for diversity.
For lunch breaks and other spare moments I have a small sketchbook where I like to draw whatever comes to mind.
You might be interested in Clozemaster for language learning. It has collections of most frequent words where you get a sentence with a word missing that you have to input. That way you just get blasted with hundreds and thousands of sentences in your target language.
And by reading, half is a actual book. The other half is a audiobook while doing chores, working out, or general crafting.
I can honestly say reading non-fiction books about various subjects helped me a lot in life. From social issues and self-help, to finances, to dating. I grew up poor in a pretty rough environment, and climbed out of it because of reading.
I’m on android so I used ReVanced, though I recently deleted the YouTube app and installed LibreTube which has no YouTube algorithm and no shorts tab. (I use the IzzyOnDroid repo with F-Droid)
Libretube is fine but it crashed a lot on my phone i’m now using" newpipe xsponsorblock" it took me a long time to import all my subscriptions but it works really great. The only alternative I would considered is freetube for android
There is a critical bug in the F-droid release, but the maintainers seem to have a bit of an internal conflict about publishing the app on F-Droid, the IzzyOnDroid/GitHub release is pretty stable.
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