Earlier this week I blogged about scrapping your to-do lists and instead scheduling each of your to-do items on your calendar in order to become more effective and getting things done.  Today I want to talk about scheduling something else – Free Time. Now you are probably asking yourself, “If I schedule out exactly what I’ll be doing in my free time is that time still considered free?”

For starters, if you don’t block out free time on your calendar than guaranteed the free time won’t happen. There is always going to be an endless supply of tasks to fill up your day so the only way to ensure you get time to enjoy life is to block free time into your calendar.

Within those blocks of free time it’s imperative that we take it a step further and schedule out exactly what we are going to do with that free time.  Reason being, if we don’t get specific it will be far too easy to justify letting work tasks encroach on our free time, because frankly, work tasks sound more important that just having free time does.

My husband and I have started to plan out our free time with specific events such as going boating, or attending a specific concert, or making dinner reservations at a restaurant, or seeing a particular movie, or going to a rodeo, or paint night, or going to a dance…the more specific the events we book in our free time the greater the chances go up that we will actually get to have that free time.

We have to remember that we will be far more productive with balance in our lives and balance can only be achieved when both work and free time are treated with equal importance.

If you want more free time in life then start scheduling it out – and remember, the more specific you get the more free time you’ll have.

~Amy Rees Anderson