Each person has 24 hours a day; it is up to you how you choose to spend that time. Studies, house chores, socialization, social media etc. While busy in our daily lives, we sometime stop and ponder – "oh man I'd like to learn music" or " I'd like to start my dance practice again" or " I wonder if I could write poetry, that has been a dream of mine" but then you get a Whatsapp message or a Facebook notification and you get back to circle of life. If that sounds any familiar to you and your heart tells you to follow your passion or just create more time for yourself for self-care routine but you shut those feelings up by thinking you got no time for this, I'd suggest you to sit without distraction, breathe and tell yourself you can do it. Do whatever you love. If you take out some time for doing things you love, your world won't turn upside down. It's very easy process. Just schedule it out. Following are my main tips for scheduling learnt through the process of on-going experiments of time in daily life.
1. Lower the distraction time :
By distraction I mean that in today's world spending time with your friends, family and neighbour would not be considered as distraction but the social media. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp have become popular ways to express ourselves and communicate with those we admire or love. I remember waking up in the morning and first thing checking my phone for social media sites. Since I have mindfully replaced this habit with a cup of green tea and my rule of no phone checking before breakfast. I have not only time to brainstorm new ideas for writing (which is my hobby) but also there is so much peace of mind. I am not saying that make hard and fast rules for you but instead of spending 30 minutes on social media spend only 5-10 minutes. Believe me; you also know that scrolling endlessly through Facebook won't give you any positivity. That way you'll be surprised to see that how much free time you are able to make for the things you love.
2. Say no to multi-tasking:
Contrary to the popular belief that multitasking saves time, I like to think when we are properly engaged in doing one thing mindfully our concentration is one pointed. This way we are able to complete the task perfectly and on time. Experiment doing this yourself. While doing tasks, commit yourself fully to just one thing. This will save you mental energy and time. Also, it will help you to be more efficient at the things you need to do.
3. Make a guideline –
I say a guideline and not a schedule because even though I'll talk about schedule it is highly recommended to keep it flexible for important things and relaxation time. So let’s get started with your schedule:
TO-DO Things: These are the things that are compulsory to daily life like going to school, college, doing house chores like cooking, cleaning etc. Make a rough table of how you spend your day. Fill in all the necessary to-do activities. Take one day to make this schedule because slipping during the day mindlessly we forget to add all the tasks that we do.
List of things you'll love TO-DO: Easy! Just make a list of all the things that you'd like to do if you had free time. Don’t think too much, just write whatever your heart tells you to. While making this list write the estimated amount of time you want to spend on each thing per day or per week. For example - 1-2 hours a day/week to do yoga or painting.
Now make a weekly planner (Sunday- Saturday) from the time you wake up to time you go to sleep. Incorporate into this your important TO-DO things that are non-negotiable. Now see where can you make time for your hobbies or things that you love to do. Incorporate these in your morning or evening routine. The reason for this is that during day time you could be busy with college or job. But if you are free during the mid-day too, then schedule the things according to your convenience.
At last, go through your schedule and make sure to leave some 'me time' for yourself that is the time to rest and relax. Don’t pack up your schedule to rigidly because sometimes it doesn’t go as planned and that leads to discouragement.
So to conclude you have to make time for the things you love and that can happen if you plan properly.
As Christian Louboutin says it -" Do what you love, it is the best way to relax."
