More so than working out, video games, eating, taking a walk, or any of the typical "zoning-out" activities I've tried over the years, the one that never fails to relax me is stream-of-consciousness writing.
I've found that on nights where I have trouble sleeping, taking 20 minutes and writing out every single thought in my skull (into a notebook; not onto a computer) pulls me out of the mental block and brain thunderstorm that is resisting calls to slumber. When it's out on paper, it becomes real. It doesn't sit and dwell as an empty, half-complete thought.
I've had a similar experience recently with trying to make sense of my life using spreadsheets.
For instance, while I was trying to sort out my enormous TODO list, I decided to prioritize projects by assigning them scores based on a few different features. This was straight in the OS X Stickies app, but after I had more than three features/attributes, I realized it would be better done on a spreadsheet. That has been enormously useful and has really taken the stress off. I wrote about it in this post: http://noisytyping.com/quantify-your-personal-values/
It turned out that this was an established method in Operations Research, btw.
Edit: I'll note the attributes I use in my real spreadsheet (as opposed to the example in the blog post):
- Time to completion
- Time to first results
- Expected earnings
- Possible windfall
- Intrinsic fun
- Outreach
- Special commitments
- Learning new skills "opportunity benefit"
- Execution risk (misc factors)
- Familiarity
- Novelty (not mutually exclusive with Familiarity)
- Competition
- Autonomy
- Reputation building
As noted in the post, some factors can have a weight of zero. I still give them a co-efficient per project because the factor weight could change in the future.
I've been thinking about getting an electric typewriter just for this reason - to force myself to write without editing, but with a bit more speed than handwriting generally allows.
Plus, I mean, come on -- typewriters are just cool. I had a mechanical one as a kid that my sister-in-law now uses as a handsome display piece. Probably my most favorite childhood toy besides Legos.
I've found that on nights where I have trouble sleeping, taking 20 minutes and writing out every single thought in my skull (into a notebook; not onto a computer) pulls me out of the mental block and brain thunderstorm that is resisting calls to slumber. When it's out on paper, it becomes real. It doesn't sit and dwell as an empty, half-complete thought.