I’m having some personal issues causing some severe depression and anxiety. I’d like to get past this time as fast as possible, and my days are dragging on. I can’t sleep, which would be a good way to make time go fast. But I also can’t just play video games, I don’t have the motivation to play more than a few minutes and it also just makes me realize how alone I am with no friends or anyone I can connect with emotionally and I spiral into my anxiety and depression.
I can do stuff during the day, run, chores, etc. But as soon as I’m done, especially at night, I start freaking out and it seems like time stands still. Does anyone have any suggestions? Activities I can do that are mindless that will just kill time and get me through the night before I can just go to sleep?
I know this question is stupid but I’m looking for at least somewhat serious answers.
I take melatonin so I can sleep instead of lying awake with my thoughts
throw on some music to keep my mind occupied until I start falling asleep
I’ve been listening to a great book series called dungeon crawler carl on audible…there’s like 6 books and they are pretty long .that could eat up time… I listen to them whilst exercising
Haven’t listen to dungeon crawler Carl, but He who fights with monsters is also a good series
Mines a wild departure in tone but the Wandering Inn is both long and engaging.
Ooh ill add it to my list! Thanks friend
Get a job in building construction.
You work hard, you work together with people, you start your day early and you get tired in the evening.
Well, let’s see…
Time in your local frame of reference slows down the closer you are to a gravitational force. This will give you the perception the rest of the universe. However, you’d need a pretty strong gravitational force to notice any effect of it.
A black hole is one of the most powerful sources of gravity out there, but if you don’t want to waste millions of years travelling to some far away celestial body, you can find an even stronger gravitational force much closer to home:
Your mum.
Getting books from the library to read?
Not OP but I personally don’t have enough patience to read entire book. I just can’t. I don’t know how other people read whole book in few days.
Start with Short Stories or novellas. A whole story from beginning to end in as short as 3 pages or as many as 30 or so. There are entire books of short stories (anthologies) in every genre you can imagine. You say you don’t have the patience. However, in the time its taken you to read this entire thread, you could have finished a short story. You’ve proven you have the patience.
If I am super interested in a book that I got as a gift, I will tear through it in a few days. That being said, I’ve probably read like 4 adult books since being out of school. Plenty of kids books over the years, (I had mastered Fox in Socks at one point.)
It takes a lot for me to take that much time on a book.
Audiobooks. Libby app for local library and countless audiobooks already covered by your library card.
I’ve listened to/read so many books. Short ones that are 4 hours or so to entire series where each book is about 20 hours or so.
Long drive? Audiobook. Yard work? Audiobook.
I find myself looking forward to the mundane chores because it gives me an excuse to get back into whatever story/book I’m enjoying.
I’m the same. I read super slow, and I just don’t enjoy it really. Audiobooks are hard for me too. I like podcasts sometimes, and I read a lot of articles and stuff like that. But books are just too much for me.
Have you ever tried listening to hardcore history by Dan Carlin? I find he’s the right level of captivating to keep me interested, but slow enough that I can still drift off to sleep
Procrastinating… I feel, whenever I postpone something for tomorrow, days fly by faster than usual.
Having a due date for a project or work assignment that you procrastinate really makes time move way too quickly
I smoke weed and watch TV. I also take Zoloft every day and it works pretty well at minimizing my intrusive thoughts too (which mostly happen at night) so it’s like multi-pronged for me.
Idk, if you’ve been going through this for a while and nothing in this thread works, you could look into antidepressants; you don’t have to be on them forever. A lot of the common ones are somewhat affordable without insurance.
I had been on zoloft for a while but stopped a few years ago. I actually just started again very recently. We’ll see if that works.
Weed doesn’t help for me, it makes me more anxious. TV also helps for a little bit
Start a project doing something that allows you to enter a flow state. Could be programming, woodworking, knitting, anything you can reasonably do with your interests and budget. If you can find something that holds your attention it will delete time.
It’s hard to get the motivation to do a project. I’m really looking for something totally mindless. Like, exercise is a good one, but I do a lot of that during the day and it starts to get unhealthy and unproductive. I end up at night doing a lot of pacing, or stuff like that. I was hoping for something the equivalent of pacing but that isn’t physical. I don’t know. I think I’m just grasping at straws that there’s some solution to this that I haven’t thought of.
Yeah motivation can be tricky and I actually missed the bit where you’re specifically looking for something to do at night before getting to sleep instead of pacing around.
Uhh… Rubix cube? Puzzle? If you don’t want to walk around something where you use your hands and that takes some mental focus might help. Hopefully you find something!
Have you tried video games? Expeditions is a Spintires game, so you’re driving trucks around a map to do quests. Tedious in a fun way, it’d definitely kill a month. Looks like the cheapest way to play is Switch or Steam Deck (during the summer sale)
Seems like a great time to invest in some therapy
I actually have started therapy. But it’s only once a week. So that doesn’t really help the time aspect. That’s more of a long game
Yes, therapy is a great way to pass the time.
MMORPG’s. Do you have a favorite?
Time is the one true currency why do you want to waste it? Learn to program or run linux but donr have the goal of i gotta learn this have the goal of i wanna learn this so so i do xyz fun thing with it. I mean u could always get a mindless job and u would be earning money that why ur productively wasting time. Learn to cook good food. Go touch grass and walk hell just go have a shower and go stand in the sun. Work out doesnt need to be much. Let yourself get bored let yourself reflect and think escapism leads to hate leads to suffering leads to alcoholism leads to the dark side.
Make urself a checklist of thing to do every day. Not goals to achieve but things to do that will slowly work u towards those goals. Then aim to do more than yesterday dont stress it if u fail as long as u did soenthing.
As Jordan Peterson would say go clean up ur room and make your bed.
Learn to program
I’m a software engineer. I make really good money. I’m off work this week, but then next week, and also the weekends.
Go touch grass and walk
I run every day
Work out doesnt need to be much.
This actually is the problem for me. Running and working out actually help. But it only kills a couple hours, and then if I do more it’s not healthy and I’ll injure myself.
As Jordan Peterson would say go clean up ur room and make your bed.
Are you shitting me? You’re quoting jordan peterson?
Is it burnout? Have you felt changes during vacations 3 weeks+? If you can afford it, maybe ask your employer for two or three months off unpaid, if you sell it as burnout prevention, it should also be in his interest.
Then get some sleep medication and do what your body tells you to.
I’ve told my manager that I’m having issues. I don’t actually want to take time off because work is a pretty decent way to pass the time. But I’m not in a mental space to focus at my usual level. So I think I’ve got that covered
Damn seems like u got most things covered great to hear. How about contributing to a foss project if u can handle doing that in ur work break.
Just cos he is wrong about some things doeant mean he’s wrong about all. I mean even Hitler had some good points (everyone deserves a job land and a family thats the dream he sold the people.
OP doesn’t necessarily “want” to waste time. OP is going through some difficult things right now and looking for helpful advice just to get through the day, Yoda.
I can think of three things:
- Gaming
- Contributing to opensource
- Learning something news
I find it hard to contribute to some projects because I don’t understand the overall architecture but I think contributing to unit testing is pretty simple. You just need to understand the smallest units of work, not the whole thing.
My suggestion is to spend maybe half an hour in the evening learninga new hobby/skill, then when you’re in bed go over what you learnt in that half hour in your mind to cement it. You’ll find that just running over the knowledge in your mind induces the “counting sheep” effect and will help you drift off to sleep.
If it doesn’t work, then at least you’ll learn a new skill much quicker!
What about a bucket full of horse meth, then you didn’t need to sleep for a month?
Kind of the wrong direction there. I WANT to sleep, but I can’t.
Oh then just ignore my bad advice.
