The 4 types of activities
06/27/2023
- Lifestyle activities. These are activities that we do on a fairly regular basis whose goal is to bring emotional pleasure – comfort, joy, excitement, fun, etc. – into our lives. Activities like watching TV, playing games, sex, drinking, partying, listening to music, etc., are lifestyle activities.
- Protective activities. These are activities that help to protect you from or mitigate risk. Activities like cleaning, organizing, hygiene, setting up reminders or dates on your calendar, saving money, etc., are protective activities. Cleaning and hygiene, for example, protect your health; organizing helps save you time and protects you from feeling anxious; setting up reminders helps protect you from forgetting something important.
- Productive activities. These are activities that help you grow or develop in some way and produce beneficial results in your lives and the lives of others. Activities like watching educational videos, reading an educational book, practicing a skill, training for some event, decorating, building a useful tool for your house, etc. fall under the category of productive activities.
- Destructive activities. These are activities that generate problems, conflict, and wasted time. Activities like complaining, arguing, criticizing, blaming, self-doubting, stress-eating, worrying, obsessing, etc. are destructive activities. They do not produce any positive results, only negative ones.
As a general rule, you want to evaluate lifestyle activities to make sure they are worth doing. Oftentimes this is a question of extent. Some people, for example, love to watch TV and play video games. But is it worth it to do those activities for hours on end? You have to evaluate how much of your time these activities are worth and if you are leaving space for other activities.
For protective activities you have to optimize. If you are spending all your time cleaning and organizing, then you will soon have nothing to protect. Therefore, you want to make sure that your protective activities require as minimal effort as possible and produce maximum results so that you have the time, health, and money to spend on lifestyle and productive activities.
When it comes to productive activities, you want to invest time and energy in developing yourself and your situation. You want to take dedicated time to learn, to grow, to provide value to yourself and others. These activities should take up a big chunk of your time.
Lastly, you want to eliminate or reduce destructive activities as much as possible. You want to stop yourself from arguing and criticizing, from doing things out of fear or anxiety.