You don’t have time for yourself?! Here’s how to find it!

Faced with a huge number of demands, we often end up in a situation where we think we don’t have time for some activities that would bring us joy and satisfaction.

Sometimes we have the feeling that we don’t have time for anything, except to do everything that “must” be done. Most often we think that it is because “life is fast” or because “there are too many demands”, as if these two things are something that is somewhere outside of us and that we personally have no influence on them.

The first thing that can help us make a difference between nurturing such attitudes and the possibility of taking personal initiative to change the circumstances is to become aware of the formulations by which we define these categories.

The big difference is made by the fact that the thought – live fastreplace it with a more accurate definition of the situation through thought – I live fast.

It is absolutely certain that there are people around us who we could say “live slowly”, as well as those who are not exposed to too many demands. The reason for this is precisely that there is a difference between statements – too much is demanded of people todayi statements – today people demand too much from themselves and from life.

If we find ourselves in a situation where we think that too much is being asked of us, it would be convenient to reformulate this thought so that we see where we ourselves are asking and expecting too much from ourselves.

By trying to do as many things as possible and achieve as many goals as possible, do we voluntarily miss out on the time we need to devote to ourselves, our development and our pleasures?

The problem certainly does not exist if we feel that fine balance when it comes to our distribution of energy and time, when we are satisfied, healthy, rested, energetic and efficient. In that situation, “there is no time”, can only be a good excuse not to agree to some activities for which we are not sufficiently motivated. However, if we really chronically feel that we don’t have time for ourselves, if we feel fatigue, low energy, dissatisfaction and chronic unpleasant busyness, it is likely that we are not making good choices when deciding how to spend our time.

If we recognize that we are in such a situation, it would not be a bad thing to monitor for at least one week what exactly we spend our time on, exactly how much time we spend on each individual activity, what goals we achieve and how much it contributes to our general state of satisfaction and energy.

We can start from a group of important activities to which we are committed.

It includes all those things that we do regularly, such as work tasks, responsibilities at home, activities that arise from various social roles that we have, sports activities or some other related to our interests. When we compile this list, we can do an analysis during which we will ask ourselves if we really need all these activities. Are there any among them that do not produce results or produce results that do not really contribute much to our happiness and fulfillment? And finally, which of them can we eliminate or reduce the time we devote to it?

If we focus on tracking our time spending trend, it is important to be very meticulous in tracking it. It is not enough to see only those meaningful chunks of time that we spend on various tasks or specific things, but it is necessary to look at everything we do.

For example, the communication we have with the people around us, which can be typical and monotonous or consist of pointless exchanges of information, attitudes and ideas about things we cannot influence, flipping channels on the TV for half an hour, or some other forms of “wasting time”. which we are not aware of at all because it seems to us that they do not cost much and because everyone else around us is apparently ready to pay this price. That’s why it’s important to try to identify exactly these “time-wasting” habits and make some decisions about them. We can ask ourselves what they are good for, do they really give good results and what could we do better for ourselves instead of them?

That’s why it’s important that when we make this list, we mark this type of activity as a separate category where there is great time-saving potential.

We can give it a name – wasting time or another, closer to us personally, name that will remind us of the true nature of this set of activities.

The next important group are the activities that we have taken upon ourselves, and they do not have to be part of our responsibility. It is not bad to separate from the basic list, a special list of everything that we spend time on, and someone else could take it upon themselves. Then, analyze these activities and make decisions about them. Decisions should be time-defined and realistic. For that, it is important for us to determine exactly whose responsibilities are in question and what would be an adequate distribution in relation to them. In addition, it would be useful to know exactly how much time we would get.

With all this, it is important to be aware that everything that seems small, is not so small if it is seen as part of a larger whole and if it is combined with other possibilities. If we remove one activity from each group from this list, which lasts even only 20 minutes, we can also get that twenty-fifth hour that we keep missing. At the level of the month, that is a new 30 additional hours, at the level of the year we are talking about 360 hours or about 15 days, and at the level of a decade 150 additional days of focused, joyful, meaningful and fulfilling time.

Then all that remains is to find an answer to the question – what would we spend our time on if we had one extra hour a day.