I enthusiastically called one of my friends to check if she could join me for lunch the following week. It was spring break, and she works part-time at the school. I thought that would be perfect. Instead, she recited a litany of things she had to get done over spring break before the school started again.
“But, you still have five more….” , she cut me off, “Not everyone is lucky enough to take a long break from work and do what they want to do.” I knew she was referring to me.
I never have time for anything
It wasn’t that long ago when I felt exactly the same. I felt I did not have enough time or rather never had any time to do what I actually wanted to do.
Recently I took a break from my career, to pursue a dream. A long-held dream of being able to work from anywhere in the world, whenever and as I desired. I work for myself.
Now I don’t feel hurried all the time as I did before. I am still working close to ten hours a day. Since now I am home I get assigned a lot of additional tasks. However,I don’t really feel overworked or pressed for time anymore.
I just stopped and pondered, although my workload has not changed, if anything it has increased, so what is the reason that I don’t feel crunched for time anymore?
After some introspection, I realized it was just a shift in my perspective. When I worked at a regular 9 to 5 corporate job, I felt that my non-working time was very precious. I was very stingy with my time. Doing anything unproductive felt like a waste, I felt guilty about reading something for leisure, or doing Sudoku for a few minutes. I felt as if I never had enough time.
The passing of time gave me a sinking feeling. I guess because I treated it as a very scarce commodity.
Now I am not bound by a strict work schedule. I have the flexibility of having my work adapt to my lifestyle. I feel I have time to do what I want to do.
How Do I Do It?
My Priorities are very clear. If I don’t do something it is not because I don’t have time for it, but because it is not my priority.
Just setting my priorities right made a big difference. A big part of it was being mindful and conscious all the time. I categorize all my personal and work related tasks into “must do” , “I want to” and “everything else” . If it is a “must do” task there is no question about it, it needs to get done.
For “everything else” I ask myself, is this the most important thing I could be doing right now? If yes, it gets done. If not, I ask myself what it si the most important and impactful taks I could be doing right now.
I allocate certain number of hours for “I want to” category every week. That is my time. I can spend it as I want without feeling guilty, doing what gives me joy and happiness.
I allow myself some flexibility when it comes to categorizing thses tasks. For example cooking a healthy dinner for my family is a must do task almost everyday, but occasionally I settle for a pizza delivery. It may be because there is another taks which takes precedence or just to give myself some time for “I want to” task.
When it comes to working on my business, I have clearly marked the high impact areas. Working on these high impact areas is always a priority. I start my day with the tasks which fall in this category. Later in the day I move on to other less impactful tasks.
You Can Too
I can’t stress enough how important it is to be mindful for this to be effective. Because if I go on autopilot and do things mindlessly it is very easy to get carried away and waste hours after hours. When I stay present it is easy to detect when I am getting distracted and focus on the task at hand and get it done.
We all have 24 hours in a day. It is one thing where every human being in this world is on an even ground. But, some of us accomplish so much more than others in those 24 hours. Hopefully you will be able tp out into practice some of my tactics of getting over being perennially busy.
Do you have a way of making the most of your time? If you have a special trick or strategy please share it below in the comments.