How to Find More Time!!
The New Year is often the easiest time for people to decide to make life changes. This is because along with the New Year comes a tabula rasa, a blank slate which is untarnished by our time wasting, sugar loving, binge watching habits. I believe that the reason so many New Year's Resolutions go so quickly by the wayside is because the first time we make a mistake or miss a day, our perfect record for the year is gone. When this happens, it is easier to justify the second slip up and so forth. For these types of stumbling times, I have 3 recommendations:
1. Prioritize your time
There is an object lesson that has stuck with me for a long time. In this lesson, you have sand, pebbles, golf balls, and a jar. Your objective is to fit everything into the jar, the jar representing your life and the other objects representing various things you need to do with your time. The size of these other objects ranges from the tiny things we have to do day-to-day to the golf balls which are the most important things. When we try to first fill the jar with the sand, we find that we quickly run out of room for all the pebbles and golf balls. However, if we first add the golf balls then the pebbles, and finally the sand, we learn that everything fits because the sand simply fills itself in the cracks. This is how we should treat our time. If something is very important, we should give attention to that event first and then everything else will fill in the cracks in your week.
2. Evaluate your relationship with time
There are 168 hours in a week. That is a lot of time! If you take out 8 hours for sleep each night (8*7=56) and 40 hours a week for our full time job, you are still left with 72 hours. Have an hour long commute twice a day? You still have 62 hours remaining in the week. What could you do with 62 hours? Perhaps you could make it to the gym once or twice a week, prepare a meal rather than eating out, or start a new hobby. Maybe you have always wanted to write a book. With the 62 hours remaining in your week, perhaps you can start with writing just one page a day. It isn't that I am adding or taking away any time that you didn't have before. I am simply helping you reevaluate your relationship with time. You have always had 168 hours in a week. With that, I truly believe you can find time to become the person you've always hoped to become!
3. Ask yourself what is important to you
If someone were to ask you to find 7 hours in your week to volunteer, you may not be able to find the time. However, if you were paid $1,000,000 if you could find 7 hours this week, very few people wouldn't be able to make that work. It isn't a matter of not having time, it is a matter of whether certain activities are worth the time to you. It is okay to, for instance, to start your weekend early so that you can go on a hike with your family. There is always work that could be done during that time. However, you only have this day today. You will never have this day, this week, and this year of your life back. What kind of a life do you hope to live?
~Whitney
P.S- I hope you found something that spoke to you in this blog. This topic suddenly became more real to me when I first heard the following TED talk. The ideas I discussed here largely come from this talk, so I highly recommend watching it. I have watched this talk time and time again (no pun intended).
