Remember that if you want to do more of something, you have to do less of something else. It's that time of year where people set goals for the new year and they have plans and hopes and it's always focusing on what they want to do more of. More studying, more exercise, more crafting, more socialising, more making things from scratch. Okay, great. What are you going to do less of in order to have the time and energy to do more of those things you really want to do?
And if your answer to this is "less doomscrolling" or "less bedrotting" then great, but please think about why you're doing those things. No one's doomscrolling or bedrotting because they don't have things they'd rather be doing. Actually, I'm willing to bet you have a lot of things you'd rather be doing and you spend your life internally screaming at yourself to do literally any one of the many things you want to be doing instead, but you don't have the energy for them all and you can't work out how to prioritize them, so doomscrolling spares you from making that decision. Or perhaps you're burned out from taking on too many projects and you need to rest your brain, so you lie in bed because you don't even have the energy to get started anymore.
This is going to be a really hard pill to swallow, but the truth is you might not be able to balance all your hobbies and all your projects the way you'd like. If you want to finish writing that book, you might have to reduce your daily drawing habit to a couple of times a week. If you want to do yoga every morning, you might have to accept not cooking from scratch as often. If you want to spend more time with your family, you might have to cut down on your yearly reading goal. I'm not saying give up on your hobbies; I'm be realistic with your time and your energy and be kind to yourself. Stop expecting yourself to do more and do better every single year. You don't have to constantly be growing upwards and reaching for the stars; you can be content with where you are, or even cut parts of yourself back to make space for other things in your life to bloom.
Think about what your priorities are and make peace with doing less of other things. Less is okay. Less is not failing. Less is self care.
