When was the last time you managed your time well? You woke up feeling refreshed, the members of your household (including you) were fed and clothed at a reasonable hour, and everyone went off to their respective days and was fully productive. Upon reuniting (or getting home, for single member households) everyone felt satisfied at their output and in control of their destinies..the feeling of openness and connection prevailed.
What’s that, you say, this has never happened?
There are 168 hours in a week.
Let’s do some “Ideal” math:
168 Hours/Week
-63 (NINE hours/night sleep, SEVEN days/week)
-35 (FIVE hours/day eating and food preparation)
-12 (TWO hours transport/day, SIX days/week)
_______
58
-35 actual work hours* (which would be amazing!)
_______
23 hours/week to play with
It’s ideal for our bodies to spend that much time preparing to/and eating and sleeping, and traveling 2 hours or less per day for our commute. Some of you have 9-5 jobs. So let’s remove another 35 hours/week for work (we’ve already included an hour/day to eat in our formula).
What are you doing for 23 hours/week? Think of it like free money that you can spend however you want.
It’s not that you don’t have enough time. It really isn’t. It’s that you’re not using time effectively. Either you have an unreasonable amount of things TO DO, or you’re spending your time doing things that don’t get you where you want to go…or both.
There are 7 levels of Joumor:
- Stuff
- Space
- Time
- Habits
- Money
- Dreams
- Relationships
All Principles of Joumor apply to all levels:
Redundancy: Think of a pair of shoes and a shoebox. When the shoes are taken out of the shoebox, it takes nearly double the space to store them. We can either store the shoes in the box, or remove the box completely.
The same is true for time: either put one activity inside another (do the dishes WHILE the laundry is washing) or Remove what doesn’t belong– see if there’s an activity, the proverbial shoebox, that can be removed. If you insist that both the shoes and the shoebox must be saved and stored separately, you will either find a place where they both fit, or it will become a problem, they will be in your way.
Maybe we can’t have it all, but we can have a lot more if we take the time to:
- Consider what really matters (to us, not to others)
- Are willing to be flexible on what we focus on now and what we put to the side for now
- Admit our ways
Crowding Out with Nourishment: Things work better when they move little by little in a particular direction. The sudden shock to our system from burgers, fries, and a beer to kale, avocado, and sparkling water might not be sustainable. Begin to crowd out your “time junkfood appetite” by adding in nourishing things:
- Schedule dates with your loved ones
- Make time for your hobbies
- Leave the house early so you arrive relaxed and available to yourself and others
We have one life. Let’s Be Intentional and make choices that allow us to make the most of it, at least for 23 hours a week.