Today was an odd day for me. I’ve mentioned before that I like to have a steady stream of content going into my mind each day. It keeps my mind working, and especially as I’ve been blogging each day, it’s helped to have things that I am learning each day.
In keeping with an analogy I mentioned in another post, I felt like I spent most of today draining my lake, with basically nothing filling it back up.
It’s an interesting concept because this is different from the whole “I gain energy from being with or away from people” idea. That mostly has to do with quality of life. I feel like this is somehow a…quantity of life idea?… Bear with me. I know I’m sounding a bit far out.
Let me restate what I’m talking about. People have often correlated extrovert and introvert with whether you gain energy from being with other people or if you gain energy from being by yourself. Some people are far extremes of one or the other, some people need a balance of both, and some people just never have energy. Okay. So that seems mainly directed at quality of life, right? If you’re an extrovert and you spend a week without seeing anyone, your quality of life is probably going to suffer. You won’t have the energy or the joy that you would have if you spent it with others. So that’s quality of life.
What I’m talking about is the content you are putting into your life. Maybe you’re more introverted — someone who loves to be by themselves. But what do you spend that time doing when you are by yourself? Do you do absolutely nothing? Do you listen to music? Do you read a book? Do you clean stuff? These all seem to be the “quantity” of life that you are putting in. What you do will directly impact the amount your brain is working.
Say you’re more introverted. You go hang out with friends all day and at some point talk about a lot of really deep issues. You will probably come home exhausted (that’s the quality) but your mind probably has one million things going through it (that’s the quantity) so many things about the day that you are thinking about. Things people said, sights that you saw, memories that you made, etc. You started that day with more quality than quantity, but you ended with more quantity than quality.
Yikes. I almost rolled my eyes at myself after that last sentence. I feel like I’m really stretching this quantity/quality thing, but I also feel like you probably understand what I’m getting at. If not, feel free to message me. (For real)
The last notes I have on this are just to simplify this once more. The gist of it is this: I like to live each day by using energy to gain insight. Whether that be through insight reading articles, learning something new, having meaningful conversations, creating new friendships, etc. The days I don’t do this, my mind stops working as much, and I start losing ground on what I have gained.
Energy is a currency. Will you use it, or will you waste it?