I’ve been thinking about time lately. Not so much about how quickly it passes, although that is certainly something I notice more as I get older. It’s more about what I choose to do with it.
On Monday, I wrote about deciding to take time instead of constantly trying to find it. About spending an evening on my sofa without even turning on my computer, and about letting one of my creative projects wait while I focus on others.
But there’s something else I’ve been thinking about since then.
What happens when almost everything you want to do feels worth your time?
We hear a lot about time management. How to eliminate distractions, stop procrastinating, become more productive, and get rid of things that don’t add value to our lives.
And yes, I suppose there’s something to be said for that.
But what if distractions aren’t really the problem?
What if the things competing for your time are things you genuinely enjoy?
Too Many Interesting Things
I have always been curious. I think that’s probably obvious to anyone who has followed my various projects over the years.
I find something interesting, start exploring it, and before I know it, I’ve created a whole project around it.
Sometimes even a website.
And then, of course, I discover something else.
Right now, I have several creative projects going. One is a playful little YouTube channel where I create things with an AI character called Curio. Another is a historical exploration of artificial intelligence, going back seventy years. And then there’s Talking AI, where I explore questions about our relationship with AI and how it affects our everyday lives.
I enjoy all three.
But lately, the historical research and the conversations have been pulling me in more strongly.
I can spend hours going through old documents, discovering things I didn’t know, or following a question that leads to another question. And when I finally look at the clock, I wonder where the evening went.
Those are good evenings.
But so are the evenings when I’m creating something silly with Curio.
That’s the difficulty.
I’m not choosing between something worthwhile and something that isn’t. I’m choosing between different things that all give me something.
And there simply aren’t enough hours for all of them.
The Trouble With Being Curious
Curiosity is usually presented as something positive, and I certainly believe it is.
It keeps us learning. It makes ordinary things more interesting. It encourages us to question what we think we know.
But curiosity also has a rather inconvenient habit of multiplying.
One question leads to three more. A new skill opens possibilities you hadn’t considered. You read an article, discover a reference to something else, and suddenly you’re researching a subject you didn’t even know existed yesterday.
I rather like that part.
Actually, I love it.
The difficulty comes when curiosity meets reality.
Because no matter how interested I am in something, I still only have twenty-four hours in a day. And some of those hours need to be spent sleeping, eating, doing laundry, and all those other activities that insist on interrupting my fascinating investigations.
Very inconsiderate of them.
I sometimes wonder whether the internet has made this more noticeable. Not because curiosity is new, but because so many possibilities are now right in front of us.
There’s always another course, another book, another creative tool, another interesting person to listen to.
I remember when finding information about something could take days, sometimes weeks. Now, I can follow almost any question immediately.
Which is wonderful.
But being able to explore almost anything doesn’t mean we have the time to explore everything.
I’m not sure we’ve quite adjusted to that difference.
Does Everything Need to Keep Moving?
Something I’ve noticed about having multiple projects is how easily they start feeling like commitments.
Even when nobody is asking me to do them.
I create something because it’s fun. I enjoy it, develop it, give it a name, perhaps build a website or start a YouTube channel.
And somewhere along the way, the project acquires a schedule.
Suddenly, there’s a new video to make, a post to write, or an idea that should be developed.
I say should, but who exactly decided that?
Usually me.
Which makes the whole thing rather ridiculous.
I have essentially managed to become my own demanding boss while supposedly enjoying the freedom of choosing what I want to create.
And the strange thing is that I don’t necessarily mind having schedules. I actually like having some structure. It helps me keep track of all the things I’m doing.
But I think there’s a difference between using a schedule to support something I enjoy and feeling that I have to keep doing something simply because I started it.
Perhaps that’s where I need to pay a little more attention.
Not to how productive I am, but to why I’m spending time on something.
Am I still curious about it? Am I enjoying the process? Or am I continuing because there’s an empty space on a content calendar?
Those aren’t always easy questions to answer.
Especially when the answer can change from one week to another.
Something Can Matter Without Happening Right Now
I’ve decided that Curio can wait for a while.
Even writing that sentence feels slightly odd, because I genuinely love that little character and the playful world I’ve been building around him.
But I also know that right now, my attention is somewhere else.
And perhaps that’s perfectly fine.
I don’t think every interest has to be pursued with equal intensity all the time.
Some things can be at the center of our lives for a while, then move a little to the side. We might return to them later with new ideas, or discover that our interests have changed.
I suppose that’s part of being a person who keeps learning and changing.
Still, I wonder why we sometimes treat putting something aside as a small failure.
Why does an unfinished project so easily become something we feel guilty about?
Maybe it’s because we tend to measure our creative lives by what we complete, publish, or produce.
But some projects have already given us something valuable long before they’re finished.
Curio has given me a chance to play, to create a character, and to explore storytelling in a different way. That doesn’t disappear just because I’m spending less time on it right now.
And I haven’t promised anyone, including myself, that every idea I have must become a lifelong commitment.
Although looking at the number of projects I’ve started over the years, perhaps someone should remind me of that occasionally.
Choosing What Matters Today
I don’t think I’ll ever become someone with only one interest.
And I don’t particularly want to.
I enjoy having different things to explore, even if that means my attention sometimes wanders in unexpected directions.
What I am beginning to question is the idea that everything worthwhile deserves my time right now.
Because perhaps that’s simply impossible.
And maybe choosing one thing doesn’t have to mean rejecting another.
It might just mean accepting that my interests, energy, and curiosity aren’t distributed equally every day.
There will probably be a time when I feel like spending an entire evening making Curio do something wonderfully ridiculous. And when that happens, I hope I’ll enjoy it just as much as before.
For now, I’m following a different question.
Actually, several questions.
As usual.
I still wish there were more hours in the day. I suspect I always will.
But perhaps the answer isn’t to squeeze more things into those hours.
Perhaps it’s learning to be interested in many things while being comfortable giving my attention to only a few.
I’m not quite there yet.
And knowing myself, I’ll probably come up with another project before I’ve figured it out.
But that’s also part of the fun, isn’t it?
