When you’re faced with free time, do you often find yourself picking up your phone and doomscrolling on social media or apps that don’t fuel your mind? Do you end up feeling drained because you’re spending far too much time on your devices rather than giving your mind and body what it actually needs? In this blog post, we’re going to take a look at how you can feel your free time without reaching for that habit of doom scrolling.
1. Learn a New Skill
First of all, if you know that you want to occupy your idle hands and keep your brain busy, one of the things that may really help you to kick the habit once and for all is picking up a new skill. A lot of the time, we go to reach for our devices or head to familiar apps because it’s exactly that, familiar. However, you can still use that same amount of time to learn a skill that could be really useful for life and enjoyable, rather than spending your time doing something that doesn’t achieve anything.
2. Do a Workout
Then we have the good old option of doing a workout. This doesn’t mean that you have to join a gym or become a fitness fanatic. Instead, it just means taking a little bit of time out instead of being on your phone to move your body and do something good for your health. It could be doing a yoga class online, it could be going for a run, or it could involve joining a sports team that you attend each week.
3. Meet Up With Friends
Then we have the idea of meeting up with your friends. Yes, this is something that you can still do. You don’t just have to talk to them on social media or follow along with their lives in the same way. Instead, you could arrange to meet up with them here and there to go for dinner, to go to a movie, or to just chill at each other’s houses and catch up. This could be just what you need to get away from screens and feel good in yourself again.
4. Take a Class
However, it’s really important to understand that just because you don’t want to doomscroll anymore, it doesn’t mean that you need to avoid screens altogether. Instead, when you are using your phone or your laptop, make sure that you’re doing it wisely. This is where the idea of taking a free online class could come in. You never know what you might learn or how you might expand your knowledge, and it could bring a lot of joy to your life too.
5. Play a Game
Again, not everything you do online will be bad for your mind. Instead, you can also look at playing games that are supportive of you. This isn’t necessarily the idea of getting heavily into gaming and losing hours upon hours lost in different adventures, although if that’s something that you enjoy and it doesn’t drain you, that’s not bad either. However, picking up a game such as minesweeper can be a great alternative. Not only can it support your brain function, but it can be a lot of fun too.
6. Read a Book
But if you know that you want to avoid screens altogether, then why not pick up a book? Even if you don’t see yourself as a reader, learning to fill some of your free time with a classic book can be really great for you. Not only are you avoiding screens that could be draining your eyes and your mind, but you can also get lost in a different story or even read nonfiction to enhance your knowledge.
7. Go for a Walk
You can also head out for a walk. Getting out into the fresh air and spending time in nature can be really good for your mind, body, and spirit. If you know that doomscrolling makes you feel lethargic and you seem to have lost your vitality in life, getting out and into the fresh air can really change all of that for you.
8. Travel
If you want to take that to the next level, you should also think about travelling more. Yes, you may feel like this is something that’s gonna cost you a lot of money and that you need to take time out from school or work for. That doesn’t need to be the case. You can also travel for free or look to travel locally so that it doesn’t take up too much of your time, and you can still get out to explore and enjoy the world around you.
9. Join a Group
You also have the option of joining a group. This could be anything from a sports team to a book group that meets monthly to discuss a certain novel. If you know that you tend to waste away your free time scrolling on your phone or getting lost on the internet, getting out into the real world and joining a group to be around like-minded individuals to discuss, or to practice, something that you all enjoy doing can be a great way to remedy that.
10. Go Back to School and Study
Finally, there is then the idea of going back to school so that you can study. If you know that you have too much time on your hands and you are fed up with getting lost online, why not use that time to learn something new, to indulge in things that interest you, and to gain more skills so that you can further your career? It doesn’t matter if you are a mature student and you want to get your graduate degree, or you want to make a career change. Either way, when you choose to spend your time studying something new, it could mean that you improve your prospects and begin creating a career and life that you truly love.