Pokémon GO at Level 80 and the Excel that melted away in an hour. The moment I, an occupational therapist, realized that 'things I want to do' turn into 'things I must do'

I couldn't stop playing Pokémon GO

For the past year and a half, I have poured a significant amount of time into raising my Pokémon GO level to 80.
Level 80 is the level cap, the maximum level. The total experience points required is approximately 200 million. Since you get 100 experience points for catching one Pokémon, that's roughly 2 million Pokémon. It's a staggering number.
I had been a player since the first day of the service, but I had a gap of several years in between. I started playing in earnest again in September 2024. In about a year and a half since then, I earned about 130 million experience points and finally reached level 80 just a little before I started this note.
When I achieved it, I was happy, of course. But at the same time, I felt a sudden release of tension.
Towards the end, Pokémon GO was no longer something I 'wanted to do'.
It had become something I 'had to do'.
Originally, for me, Pokémon GO was a companion for my evening walks. It was a change of pace, an excuse for exercise, and a time to clear my head. I would fiddle with my smartphone while walking, catch Pokémon, do raid battles, and then go home. Just doing that gave me a sense of my brain resetting at the end of the day. It was completely a 'like,' something I wanted to do.
When did that change?
Probably the moment I set the goal of 'let's get to level 80'.
The moment I set that goal, the walk that should have been fun turned into 'time I have to earn experience points'. How many more, how many more days, can I make it in time at this pace? Before I knew it, I wasn't 'enjoying' the walk. I was 'getting through' it.
I have a personality where once I decide to do something, I find it hard to stop. My wife was also worried about me. She told me many times, 'Don't you think you don't have to go that far?' Even so, I couldn't stop. Even though it was supposed to be something I wanted to do, before I knew it, it had become a quota I imposed on myself.
This is what I want to convey first.
The moment a goal or quota is placed on something you want to do, it turns into something you must do.
And what's troublesome is that it's hard for the person themselves to notice. Because there is the premise that 'I should be doing this because I like it,' even if it becomes painful, I can make excuses like 'I chose this myself.' That's why I can't stop. By the time I notice, work disguised as a 'like' is quietly eroding my time.

Work and likes are not in separate boxes

I am an HSP/ISFJ in my 16th year as an occupational therapist, working as a functional training instructor at a special nursing home for the elderly. I have been present at the end of life for nearly 100 people so far.
When I saw this theme from doda x note—the balance between 'things I must do (work)' and 'things I want to do (likes)'—the first thing that came to mind was that Pokémon GO experience.
And at the same time, I realized that I had been mistaken for a long time.
I had always thought of work and likes as being in separate boxes.
Work is 'something I must do.' Hobbies and time spent with family are 'things I want to do.' Like a seesaw, if one increases, the other decreases. So I thought that achieving balance meant adjusting the weight to be half and half.
But I was wrong.
Pokémon GO was supposed to be in the 'like' box, but it moved to the 'work' box on its own. Even though it was the same action of 'walking at night and fiddling with a smartphone,' the contents were swapped based on my feelings alone.
doda, the organizer of this contest, says: 'Even the same action can become either work or a like, depending on your feelings at the time.'
When I read this, I slapped my knee. That is exactly it.
Work and likes are not determined by the type of action. They are determined by your own feelings toward that action.
And this is deeply connected to what has been said in the world of occupational therapy.

The OT concept of 'meaningful occupation'

In occupational therapy, there is a core concept called 'meaningful occupation.'
People don't get better just by being moved around. A movement done because someone told you to 'do it' doesn't move the heart. But the moment you touch something that is meaningful to that person, their expression changes. Their stiff hands start to move naturally.
I have seen this many times in the field. A person who said 'my hands won't move anymore' starts to move their fingers smoothly the moment they are handed the yarn and needles for knitting, which they were good at in the past. Their body remembers.
What's interesting here is that functional training, which says 'let's move your hands for rehabilitation,' and the occupation of 'let's try the knitting you used to like,' are completely different things to the person, even if they are the same action of 'moving hands.'
The former is work. The latter is a like.
And the one that recovers faster is overwhelmingly the latter.
In other words, what we occupational therapists are doing in the field might be, in a sense, the job of 'turning work into a like.' We translate the training they are forced to do into an occupation they want to do. We help them find meaning connected to their life in the same act of moving their hands. Then, people start moving on their own.
I realized that this is the exact opposite phenomenon of Pokémon GO.
In Pokémon GO, a 'like' fell into 'work.' In the knitting in the field, 'work' rises to a 'like.'
The same 'action' can turn into either depending on your feelings. If so, work-like balance might not be about the time allocation of actions, but about how much 'meaning' or 'want to do' you can harbor in your actions.

The hour when 'likes' suddenly resided in my work

When I had that perspective, I remembered something that happened in my own work just the other day.
I like touching computers. Since there is no dedicated SE at the special nursing home, for some reason, small ICT-related troubles gather at my place.
That day, too, I was called out in the office.
'I want to remake the visitation log, but can you make it so that dates and specific time slots on specific days of the week can be automatically erased?'
Honestly, I wasn't sure if I could do it. But I answered, 'I'll try.'
First, I created a mechanism where the date and day of the week change automatically just by entering the month. This didn't take much time. The problem was the next part. 'Conditional formatting' that automatically draws diagonal lines or fills in only specific time slots on specific days of the week. This didn't go as I expected.
So, I proceeded while consulting with AIs like Gemini and Copilot. I failed many times. I repeated trial and error, saying 'This part isn't working like this,' 'Then how about this condition?' And finally, I made something I was satisfied with.
When I realized it, an hour had passed.
It was over in a flash. I was very focused.
On another day, a care manager consulted me, saying 'I want to remake the user's medical examination schedule,' so I made it a specification that automatically sorts just by typing the date. I used macros for this for the first time. I don't fully understand the structure. But it was a lot of fun to build it up little by little while consulting with the AI.
I was thinking about how to put this feeling into words, and one thing came to mind.
It's like going through a dungeon in an RPG game while looking at a strategy guide.
You hit a dead end. You look at the strategy guide (AI). You try. You fail. You try again. And that pleasure at the moment you get through. For me, the fun moments in my work were exactly this.
What's important here is that both the visitation log and the medical examination schedule were jobs I was asked to do. The starting point was completely 'something I must do,' work.
But while I was proceeding, before I knew it, it had become 'something I want to do.' I was so absorbed that an hour melted away. Even though it was a job someone asked me to do, I had come to want to do it myself.
The exact opposite of what happened with Pokémon GO was happening.
In that case, something I wanted to do fell into something I must do. In this case, something I must do rose to something I want to do.
And I realized. What affects my work-like balance is not the amount of work or the overtime hours.
How many moments like this, where 'I realized an hour had melted away,' are there in my work? That is what determines my satisfaction.

The person who shook their head, saying 'I don't want to do it anymore'

Here, I want to write about another scene I saw in the field. I don't intend to wrap it up neatly.
Last week, there was a moment at work when I was genuinely upset.
There is a certain user. Until a little while ago, I had a relationship with that person where we could laugh together while playing shogi. Although they used a walker, they could walk on their own feet.
However, after the dosage of antipsychotic medication was increased during a house call by a psychosomatic medicine doctor, that person changed rapidly. They couldn't speak. They couldn't walk. They couldn't play shogi anymore either.
That day, by chance, there was a time when their consciousness was a little clearer. I called out to them. It seemed like they were trying to appeal for something in words, but I couldn't hear it well. So, I asked as usual.
'Shall we play shogi?'
That person weakly shook their head.
They said they didn't want to watch baseball, which they used to like, anymore either. It wasn't even about shogi. I couldn't put it into words, but that's what I felt. And then, their consciousness faded again.
I was speechless on the spot.
Until just recently, for this person, shogi was the representative of 'things I want to do.' Their eyes would shine when I brought out the board. Now, they shake their head. The things they wanted to do had disappeared from within them.
What I keenly felt at this time was, before work-like balance, how precious and how fragile the very fact that 'there is something I want to do' is.
We usually complain, 'There are too many things I must do, so I can't do the things I want to do.' I complain too. But that is a worry that exists only on the premise that 'things I want to do' properly exist within me.
The things I want to do are still within me. That fact itself is actually not a given.
Seeing that person who shook their head at shogi, I thought: 'I tend to want to curse the days chased by 'things I must do,' but if I can properly continue to have 'things I want to do' behind that, that might already be a quite blessed state.'
You can only talk about the balance between work and likes while both are still in your hands.

My wife's stamps, my daughter's lessons—the allocation is different for everyone

I've only talked about my work-like balance, but when I look at my family, the way of taking the allocation is really different from person to person.
My wife worked as a physical therapist for 10 years and is now working as a chiropractor. Even though she has a job looking at bodies, she was a person who put her own body last, chased by child-rearing. During those few years when the 'terrible twos' and the COVID-19 pandemic overlapped, her every day was filled with 'things I must do.' Child-rearing, housework, infection control. 'I must do it properly' followed everything.
That wife of mine started drawing LINE stamps this year. The trigger seems to have been a calculating motive that 'it might become income.' But she said that when she started making them, she realized 3 hours had passed. What to do with the character's expression, what phrases to use. During that time, she had nothing in her head about chiropractic or housework.
My wife said, 'Oh, I can focus this much.'
This is the exact same phenomenon as my one hour of Excel. Even though the starting point was calculation (leaning toward work), before I knew it, it had become something I purely wanted to do (a like). Now, the stamps have become 23 works, and she says she continues them not for income, but because it's fun.
My daughter is 7 years old and does lessons 6 days a week. Swimming, gymnastics, aikido. From the outside, it's a hard life full of 'things I must do.' But my daughter has never taken a break except for illness. She doesn't say 'I want to take a break.' That's because she started all of them saying 'I want to do it' herself.
My wife's stamps. My daughter's lessons. My Excel.
The forms are completely different, but they have something in common. It's that there is properly a moment where 'I was absorbed before I knew it,' rather than 'being forced to do it.'
And the content of that absorption is completely different from person to person. It's not a story that you should just divide it in half. My wife has her allocation, my daughter has hers, and I have mine. I think it was very good for me to be able to see that from the side.

The diagnosis result was 'runner's high mode'

Finally, I'd like to write about my current location.
I tried doda's 'Work <Like> Balance Diagnosis.' My result was this.
Runner's high mode. 'Giving your all is comfortable. Things you must do occupy the entirety of your daily life, and you are in a state where you feel fulfillment while fulfilling your days, driven by a sense of mission and responsibility.'
And it had this advice: 'Because you are running at full power, it can become difficult to notice changes in your own pace or physical condition. Making time to stop and check your own state from time to time will be the strength to continue running for a long time in the future.'
......It's spot on. I smiled bitterly a little.
I am indeed running continuously now. I work, go home at the scheduled time, do housework, take a walk at night, and write notes after my daughter goes to sleep. My day is quite filled with 'things I must do.'
To confess honestly here, even my writing of this note sometimes tends to lean toward 'things I must do.' When I write almost every day, a sense of duty that 'I have to write today too' suddenly shows its face. There are moments that have the same smell as that Pokémon GO. Moments when a 'like' is about to fall into 'work.'
That is precisely why I consciously try to properly savor time like that one hour of Excel, where 'I was absorbed before I knew it.' That becomes a brake to prevent it from becoming a quota.
My work-like balance is probably leaning a little toward the work side now. The diagnosis hit that on the head. But I'm not pessimistic that it's 'broken.'
Because I already know. Balance is not something you take by making the amount of action half and half. How many moments can you find within the things you must do where 'I realized an hour had melted away'? That is the way to take a true balance.

Can you turn the same action into a like?

Pokémon GO taught me the 'fear of a like falling into work.' The one hour of Excel taught me the 'joy of work rising to a like.' The user who shook their head at shogi taught me the 'preciousness of the very fact that there is something I want to do.'
Work-like balance is not dividing work and hobbies in half. It's not about whether you can take a break on Saturday and Sunday.
How much can you pull the same single action toward the 'want to do' side?
Tomorrow, I will stand at the special nursing home again. I will write documents, fiddle with Excel that someone asked me to do, and sit next to a user. If there is even one moment among those where 'I realized an hour had melted away' again, that would be fine.
I think that is the one and only trick for me, who continues to run in a runner's high, to run for a long time without collapsing.
In your day, is there a moment where 'I realized time had melted away'?
When you are doing that, what are you doing?

Occupational therapist in my 16th year | Special nursing home/unit care worker | Former dementia care guidance manager | HSP/ISFJ | Continued tennis since junior high | Father of a 7-year-old daughter | 13 years of practicing Adlerian psychology | Weight loss from 106kg to 77kg | After experiencing depression and interpersonal fear, I continue to send out field-based information that I can live without medicine.

📌 Hashtags
#WorkLikeBalance #OccupationalTherapist #WorkStyle #Essay #HSP

📚 Recommended reading for you 👇
The reason why I, who was chased by things I must do, started drawing stamps

Does working steal your happiness? 7 principles for overly kind people to continue working healthily

'I'm anxious if I don't use AI, and I'm anxious if I do'—a 16-year veteran occupational therapist reflects on how to deal with anxiety in the age of AI