What gives me energy?

Note to future self…

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about what exactly gives me energy in life so that I can do more of those things. After thinking about it for a while here’s my current list:

1. Discussions: talking to smart people can be incredibly rewarding. I feel that this activity scores the highest when it comes to “things that give me energy” but it’s also hard to replicate consistently.
2. Reading: understanding a new concept or making a new connection makes me incredibly happy. I feel that books are the most dense medium for getting this type of energy.
3. Exercising: there’s a strong physiological reason behind this obviously.

There are other activities that give me a lot of energy but these are my top 3. Some honorable mentions might include:

1. Exploring a city
2. Looking at art
3. Writing
4. Meditation
5. Music & Dancing
6. Planning and Organization

Takeaways

1. A lot of these activities engage a lot of senses (mostly visual) so there’s that.
2. A common thread that ties a lot of activities together is the act of learning something new.

Next Steps

1. Write a list of things that don’t give me energy
2. Understand if I spend a lot of time doing something that doesn’t give me energy and try to reconcile that with the list above

That’s it. This was a short exercise to help me be more intentional. Let’s see how it goes(:

Now back to work…