We live in a time bound world. 24 hours in a day. 7 days in a week. 60 minutes in an hour. And so on. Many of us feel constantly pressed for time — especially now during the pandemic when the boundaries between work and home are blurred. Many of us are juggling managing a household, children AND showing up for work earlier and later; a sense of worry that we should be doing more and more.
How then, to balance what we care about and make sure that we are making time for it?
You can follow Ashley Whillans’ direction to make an overall assessment of whether or not you are a Morgan or a Taylor. Do you make choices more around accruing more money? Or more time? You can think of examples — do you book a direct flight even if it is more expensive? (pretend we can still fly!) Or do you spend a lot of time looking for the best deal on something? Do you prioritize work tasks (starting to check emails ten minutes earlier in the day if you have the time, instead of taking a longer walk)? Understanding these smaller behaviors and choices will give you a better understanding of what your priorities are.
Whillans’ research shows that people who prioritize the value of time over the value of money are happier.
If you want to have more time for pursuing the things you love, how can you do that?
Whillans suggests a time audit. Apparently, Tuesdays are the most “normal” day in the week so she suggests doing your time audit on a Tuesday. (the rebel in me wants to make Tuesdays super cool now) Essentially, she suggests that you look back on your day and think of what key tasks you performed in the morning, midday, mid-afternoon and in the evening. And then she asks you to codify them — did you experience them as pleasant? unpleasant? neutral.
Doing this will help you get a handle on what you are spending your time on and whether it is bringing you satisfaction. From there you can decide how to change your routine to bring you more happiness.
Think of is as a Marie Kondo approach to time management. Hold up your activities and see if they are bringing you joy.
I get it…. we can’t ALL being what we want all the time. BUT we can look at where we might increase our sense of accomplishment.
I look at it as getting a handle on the time leaks. Little actions that add up. Take social media or checking email, or playing an online game. Maybe you are only checking social media once a day (probably not) or maybe you are checking social media whenever you have a little break. Consider how much time this takes. Using my own example — I might check in 4-5 times a day for 5 minutes. 20 minutes right there. That’s one meditation session, one quick walk down to the lake, one warm cup of tea and one chapter of a good book.
Guaranteed that most of us can find extra time. BUT finding this extra time isn’t going to be very rewarding if you can only think that it will let you get that extra pile of laundry done (unless you find real joy in a nice clean, folded pile of laundry — then go for it).
Here’s where the most important aspect of time management comes in…. you have to know what your core purpose is! if you know that you want to devote your time to creating art or writing books that help people change their lives or helping people learn how to get more joy out of life, no matter their circumstances — if you have that kind of direction, then you can direct your time choices more skillfully towards those goals.
Don’t have a sense of what your Core (Soul) Purpose is? Stay tuned for Your Awakened Heart’s latest offering: the Soul Purpose Workbook which offers a self-guided series of contemplative questions and exercises all grounded in meditations and body-centered practices to help you arrive at your “why”.
If you know WHY you are, you can align your actions with your purpose.
It’s worth the time to get it right…. see what I did there?