(in)finite time paralysis 10.14.2011

I believe there is a phenomenon where people who have too much time on their hands and not enough responsibilities, find it hard to motivate themselves to start and do something. Anything. The thought that there is so much time to fill and too many activities to do paralyses them in essence from making choices. It makes them unable to choose an activity to pursue and they end up not doing much at all. This kind of ties in to the Paradox of Choice.

I, on the other hand, suffer from finite time paralyses.

I wonder how many other people are out there who experience the same thing I'm going through. I have a demanding job as owner of a start up company. The little free time I have is devoted to my family. It's a choice I made, I know. When you start a company and a family, one has to choose which things they prioritize. (There's basically work, family, social life, hobbies.. Can't have all four of them, so...)

My paralysis plays up when the rare occasion arises where I do have some time to do something for myself. When these occasions occur I find myself paralyzed. I can't decide what I want to do with this new found precious free time. It's not that I can't think of anything to do, it's more that the finite boundaries of my free time, and the knowledge that whatever I start will not be finished in time, restricts me from actually doing something I'd like to do.

I can imagine there are way more people who silently suffer from this condition without even realizing it. The decision to "just not do anything and plop down on the couch to passively watch TV" is usually made in a split second. Not everybody is conscious about it, not everybody finds it a bad thing either.

Honestly I feel the system of *needing* a job to survive is to blame for sucking the most amount of time and energy out of a person's life. Think about it, because I need to feed my family, I need to have a job in this society. This means I'm going to lose at least 50+ hours of my week, the better part of *five* days in a week, just to do what I need to do. When you have that much responsibility there's no real room left for, let's say, learning a new language or learning how new interesting technologies work. Learning something new means you need to spend quality time working on it. You can't learn a new language when you only have half an hour a day, or perhaps 3 consecutive hours once a month to spend on something.

This actually brings me to another topic; Why the hell don't we automate the crap out of this world yet?! But that's something that will have to wait until later..