How the way you watch movies affects your life

So this may sound weird, but I promise it'll start to make sense eventually. I sort of observed the other day that there are two different ways that people watch movies. The first group of people, they get home from work, they're pretty tired, so they sit on the couch. They have a Netflix subscription, so they throw a movie on. It doesn't really matter what it is, as long as it's sort of stimulating. They'll be on their phone, they'll be eating something, and they're just sort of having the movie on; it's just there for them.

Group number two operates completely differently. When they watch a movie, it's a lot more intentional. Maybe they looked up some reviews on IMDB, or maybe they heard from a friend that it was supposed to be really good. So they make a night out of it. They invite some friends over, or they just watch it themselves with headphones in, but they're actively engaged the whole time. I call this active movie watching.

Now, being the film nerd that I am, I fall into group number two. I very rarely just put on a movie for the sake of putting on a movie. I really like film, and I'm really engaged in it, and I like the formalistic quality of it. Now, as snobbish as this makes me sound, the point of this video isn't to flex on you about how cultured I am, but to explain a point: the difference between passive engagement and active engagement and how getting them wrong can actually really damage your entire lifestyle, your relationships with others, your work, and everything. Basically, your whole life can be ruined if you don't get this right.

Being actively engaged with something increases the quality of the thing that you're engaged with. Whether it's your work or a conversation, active engagement is better almost every single time. But there's a problem: active engagement requires willpower, and willpower is a finite resource. So it's difficult, if not impossible, to be actively engaged with every single thing throughout the entire day, all day, every single day. You're gonna completely burn out.

A great example of this is we all know a guy like Tom. Tom spends a lot of time at work, he's doing really well in his career, and he's actively engaged with the problems at work—work problems, that's what problems at work are called. He's trying hard, he's climbing the ladder, but he also has his family. By the time he gets home, he's so burnt out from work that he sits on the couch, passively watches some TV, cracks open a beer. You know, maybe his wife wants to talk about some problems that she's having in her life, and he doesn't really, you know, he's not really listening at all or trying to offer any sort of help.

Maybe his son comes up to him and says, "Dad, can we play outside? Can we throw the frisbee?" And he's, "You know, not today, son." Sometimes you do need a day like this; maybe you can't be super engaged with your family every time you get home from work. But for a lot of people like Tom, this is every single day. Compounded over weeks, months, and years, this can really put a strain on the relationships in your life.

So perhaps you can relate to Tom in your own kind of way. Maybe you're spending a lot of energy on things that you don't really care about, things that you don't enjoy, and things you find ultimately unfulfilling, which leaves you with next to no energy for the things that are actually important in your life. So what's the solution? Do you just quit your job and sit in your house in a meditative state waiting for your wife and kids to come home?

The solution is to become better at mental energy management, or MEN. So here are just a couple ways to better manage your mental energy. Number one is to take a survey of your typical day. What do you do at work? What are your tasks at work? What do you do when you get home? Then figure out how much attention each of those things really means.

So obviously, there are things at work that actually do require your full attention, especially if you have a job that has a lot of creative problem-solving. But most jobs also have areas which don't require that much energy, like writing an email, answering a phone call, sweeping the floors—things that you can really sort of mentally disengage from. Write all that stuff down. Figure out what things are important, what things you can engage with, and what things you can disengage with. But that's sort of the precursor to the actual tips that I have, and I have four of them.

So tip number one is to take more restorative breaks. One thing that I've noticed is that when I'm actively engaged with my most important work, say I am video editing a very creative project—say it's like a wedding video or a corporate video—I pretty much have to be all there when I'm doing that. But when I take a break, I make a critical mistake. A lot of the time, I just browse Reddit or I watch YouTube or I do something like that. I go on social media on my phone and that continues to work away at my brain. It's not actually restorative; I'm still mentally engaged with whatever's in front of me and it's taxing. It's not actually relaxing.

What I should be doing is going for a walk, meditating, taking a nap, maybe making myself a snack. All of these things cause you to unplug, and it sort of heals your brain in a way. Things like browsing Reddit keep your mind busy, and by the end of the day, you're gonna be so pooped out, all you're gonna want to do is be a zombie in front of a TV and breathe air.

So tip number two is to force yourself to physically and mentally relax during less important tasks. Now, this one sounds kind of weird, but it actually works really well. So say you have something like a, you know, menial email that you're supposed to write for an unimportant client, or say you're sweeping the floors, or something, or making a sandwich—whatever your job is, it's the part of the job that doesn't require a lot of thought. What you should do is relax your body when you're doing it. Relax your body and mind and sort of ease, float, be free.

Now, this may sound like a little bit of whoo-whoo crap, but it's certainly not. Listen to me, believe me. Actually, you don't have to believe me if you don't want, but what you can't deny is that our physiology and psychology are intimately linked in ways we can't even fully comprehend yet. What affects the body often affects the mind and vice versa. When you relax in your seat, when you are just a little bit more lackadaisical in your posture, you can mentally relax as well.

So if you're stressed out writing an email and you're angry at the client and you're really rigid, that's gonna mentally wear you out so fast you don't even realize it. Instead, when you're doing less important stuff that doesn't require too much of your attention, just take it easy. Maybe place some spa music, get someone lower down in the company to give you a little foot rub, and just, you know, be a douche. It's not that hard of work, so don't treat it like hard work; treat it like a little mini vacation before your actual restorative breaks.

Now, tip number three is probably the most important one, and that is to be more intentional with how actively engaged you are with the work that requires your attention. For me, that's video editing. So when I sit down to edit, I should be focused—like really, really focused—and I shouldn't break that focus. Be very, very efficient with my time so that it can be over with quicker, and that's the key here: being really, really efficient in the time that you do have.

In your most important work, you can get it over with quicker so that you have more time to just relax, saving mental energy for the things that are important in your life. Delegate a parcel of time that you dedicate fully to unadulterated productivity. Screw multitasking! I'm talking about diving into one thing with your full attention and being maximally effective. If you learn to do that for like two or three hours, and you enter this deep work space, you can get more done than you ever knew possible. Not only that, but it's over with quicker, so the rest of your day can be a breeze.

Now, tip number four—and this is kind of the obvious one, but it's barely a tip; it's more like a reminder—and that is just to take care of your health. Obviously, if you're not getting enough sleep every night, then you're not gonna have the mental energy or willpower to focus on the important things in your life, and mental energy management just won't work.

All right, that's it guys! So really take mental note or a physical note as to when you're being more passively engaged and when you're being more actively engaged. Figure out if it's congruent with your actual values. If you liked this video, make sure to hit like because when you hit like, the algorithm blesses me with, you know, shoving this video in other people's faces. So it helps them out, it helps the video rank better.

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Bros, I'm not even bald. I honestly prefer it if people started calling me Jason Statham, but I don't have the jawline yet. Yet! That sounds like I'm working on my jawline, or if the tropics... yeah, I'm Ewing.