Somehow John Luttig’s “The index mindset” ended up at the top of my “Open to-be-read articles” phone tabs, and I read through it on the subway earlier today. The thrust of the piece is:

Indexing may be the correct default for public investors, but can be dangerous when replicated in other domains. The public markets show us the second-order effects of indexing, so we can learn how it affects the private markets, startups, and culture.

While I found the comparison strained beyond its limits in a few places1, I vibed with the emphasis on “indexing” as the opposite of “conviction”. Some of my life choices are aligned with this idea2, so I’m receptive to it.

It reminded me of another idea that’s been marinating in my mind after a rabbit-hole into Derek Sivers’ blog. Derek is an impressive guy who’s done a lot of cool stuff, but the idea that’s stuck with me is “Hell yeah or no”. Basically, life is short, time is limited, and you should say no to things that don’t make you say “hell yeah”.

These compounded with another thought I’ve had recently. I’m somewhere between not-good and baseline competent at a lot of the things I do in my free time. Every time I do one of these activities, I have a vague sense that I would to improve at it. But in some sense, I’m “indexing” my free time across a lot of things (including a number of activities I don’t care to improve at).

I have an aversion to the tech-bro stereotype of a “hyper-optimized” life, and I don’t want to track every minute of my free time. But barring exceptional talent, “you have to be intentional about improvement to improve” also feels like an obviously true statement, and for most of my hobbies, “intentionality” means “spend time on”. So I thought it’d be an interesting exercise to:

  1. Try to give an rough, honest estimate of how I spend my free time in a week.
  2. Pick some activities I want to improve at between now and the end of winter.
  3. Identify some activities I can spend less time on to spend more time on the others.

Estimating free-time activities

Between getting ready/commuting (~45 minutes), lunch/coffee breaks (~75 minutes), distractions, and actual work, I usually allocate about 9-10 hours for work each weekday - let’s call it 10 for simplicity and assume this is fixed. Throw in 9 hours of bodily functions (sleep, eating, etc.), and that leaves me with about 25 work-week hours. Add in 48 weekend hours - 9*2 hours of sleep / “other body stuff”, and that means I’ve got, very roughly, 55 free hours a week.

Activities:

  • Social media: I got really into Twitter during COVID. I used to use Insta and Reddit a lot, but since I kicked my Reels addiction and Reddit shut down BaconReader, ~90% of my social media usage is now Twitter. Screentime for the Sunday I started writing this says I spent 4:15 on Twitter (yikes!). But this isn’t an perfect representation of free time devoted to scrolling. I had fewer plans than usual today, & I often read Twitter during other activities or work breaks. So let’s say (3.27/15 free Sunday hours) * 55 hours = 12 hours/week where I’m truly scrolling when I could be doing something else.
  • Watching sports: I follow the Boston Celtics, the NFL, and golf. While I follow these sports on Twitter & listen to podcasts, those are counted elsewhere, so I only count “watching” here. I probably watch some kind of game for ~3.5 hours * 4x/week = 14 hours/week (26 total).
  • Gym workouts: I go to the gym to stretch and lift weights 2-3x/week. Between commuting to and from, stretching, lifting, & showering, it’s ~2 hours * 2.5x/week = 5 hours/week (31 total).
  • Basketball: I go through phases - recently, I’ve barely been playing at all, so let’s say 1x/month * 2 hours = 0.5 hours (31.5 total).
  • Golf: I like to golf, but it’s hard living in NYC. Commuting to courses is often 2.5 hours round trip, and 5 hours for 18 holes is fairly common. I probably do 3 golf outings a month for a total of 36 holes = 2.5h * 3x + 5h * 2 eighteen hole rounds = 12.5h/month = 3h/week (34.5 total).
  • Tennis: My girlfriend and I have started to pick up tennis recently. We probably only play ~2x per month, partly because it’s really time-consuming to play public tennis in NYC. Between shlepping to and from the courts, waiting for a court (often 1hr+), playing for an hour, and showering, tennis is easily a 3 hour ordeal * 0.5x/week = 1.5h (36 total).
  • Playing Guitar: I go through phases where I don’t touch the guitar for weeks, but recently I’ve been playing ~30m * 3x/week = 1.5h/week (37.5 total)
  • Quality time with my girlfriend: On an average weeknight, I spend 20-30m talking with my girlfriend, and we spend more time together on the weekends. Excluding tennis, let’s say I spend 7 hours a week on my relationship (44.5 total)
  • Family: I usually talk to my family on the phone for ~1h/week (45.5 total).
  • Food shopping/cooking/dishes: I usually food shop 1-2x/week (45m), cook 1-2x/week (45m), and do dishes 2-3x/week (20m); my girlfriend is a better cook than me. Roughly 3h/week (48.5 total).
  • Socialization: I go out with friends/coworkers usually 1-2x/week for 1.5-5 hours (varies a lot!). Let’s give it a rough estimate of 5h/week (53.5 total).
  • Reading: I’ve been reading more lately - let’s say 20m * 3 days a week = 1h (54.5 total).
  • Writing: I want to write more, but have not spent much time on it.

These are rough estimates and I definitely fudged some of the numbers, but I don’t think anything is egregiously off. It’s cool to see the free time estimate and activity sum end up so close, and it gives me some confidence that the estimates aren’t too far off.

Winter goals

This list is interesting to me. It hammers home both the finitude of free time and the finitude of the activities I spend my free time on. Everything I do mostly does fall into these buckets. It also makes me realize that I’m happy, or at least OK with, some of these numbers. Watching sports is relaxing/enjoyable and helps me connect with friends/family, so I’m OK spending ~1/4 of my free time on it. I also value socializing with my girlfriend/friends/family. But there are things I’d like to be better at:

  1. I want to play guitar at a level where I could jam/play with other musicians.
  2. I’d like to get back into the rhythm of playing basketball regularly, which requires >1x/week.
  3. I’d like to write something at least once every 2 weeks.
  4. I want to continue to read at least one book a month.

Practical steps

Looking at the list of things I do, there’s some clear cross-offs for winter. I can’t golf, and I don’t have access to indoor tennis, so there’s 4.5h/week. But the only other obvious thing I’d like to do less of is social media. I started looking at time limits for Twitter, and I think I’ll mess around with those. But I’m not expecting to kick the habit cold turkey, so let’s optimistically say I can shave off 2.5/week (~20m/day). That’ll give me 7 hours/week for these goals:

  1. I’ve been looking into guitar lessons. I think with an extra 2h/week (3.5 total) for lessons/ practicing, I could make my desired improvements.
  2. I usually get back into basketball over the winter. Playing 2-3x/week for 2h total would mean ~4.5h total/week.
  3. I want to prioritize writing over reading - so I guess I’m spending the remaining 30m on writing.
  4. That doesn’t leave any extra time for reading…I guess I’ll continue to read audiobooks during transit/dishes/food-shopping time. Even though I’m not planning to make any massive changes or do any minute-level tracking (aside from maybe Twitter usage), I think this exercise in “making concentrated bets” will help me be more intentional with how I spend my free time.

Footnotes

  1. Increasing globalization post-WWII felt like a tenuous comparison, and the idea that quantum mechanics represents a similar trend to buying a bundle of index funds felt…not right. But these were not the main points of the piece and I still really liked it overall! ↩

  2. The big one is making a concentrated bet on startup experience and equity at Copia instead of BigTech experience and $ that I funneled into index funds ↩