It’s Not About Having Time, It’s About Making Time

Ah, yes, time.  The one thing we never seem to have enough of.  Days pass by so quickly that it feels impossible to get it all done.  And yet some days we go at a million miles an hour only to come to the end of the day and wonder what the heck we actually got done.  If I have one big frustration in my life I think it would be that I never feel like I have enough time.  And I am horrible about keeping balance.  It is something I desperately want to improve about myself.

As I thought about that this weekend I realized that there is absolutely nothing in this world I can do to make a day longer than 24 hours.  It is what it is.  So I can either feel frustrated by it and let it control me, or I can reset my thinking and start to view it in a different way.  And so I decided to do a reset.

I have 24 hours each day, so how am I going to use that time?  I made a list of the things I know I want to make time for each day and this is what I came up with:

Time for family, time for work, time for study, time for service, time for recreation, time for self, and time for Christ.

Then I decided to make a template for myself where I took a word document and divided into those seven sections with each as a heading in its own box.  And this week I am going to do an experiment.  I am going to categorize my “to do” bullet items for the day into one of those seven sections where it would best each item fit.  Then I am going to see how many bullets I have in each section.  I think doing this will help me see whether I am achieving any level of balance in my life or not.  To achieve balance I should have items falling into each category.  To avoid getting out of balance I need to make sure that no one category is overloaded.  I have no idea how my experiment will go, but I feel like it may be a good start toward me trying to be better about achieving balance in my life and I feel good about at least making the effort.   I genuinely want to take better control of the time in my life and I definitely want to live a more balanced life, where I make time for everything and everyone that is important to me.

“The direction in which we are moving is more important than where we are at the moment.” –Marvin J. Ashton

And so this week I am moving in the direction of making time for the things that matter and achieving better balance in my life.  If any of you have other ideas or input on this topic please share it in the comments with the rest of us.  Any ideas are good ones :).

Happy Cinco De Mayo Everyone!  And have a Great Monday!
~Amy

 

 

4 Comments

  • Wills Jolley says:

    Great Post! It is true, having constant attention to life’s balance is so crucial. In order to live a successful life (defined by each person of what a successful life is) you need to revisit what your goals are and conduct some introspection to see where you are. The one thing I noticed that the balance constantly changes. It is as if you finally figured out the perfect balance, all of a sudden something gets neglected. The statement holds true, “The only thing constant is change.”

  • Steph Featherstone says:

    That’s a brilliant idea! I have this same problem, but I never thought about organizing by to do list. Thank you for sharing!

  • Brennan says:

    Thank you for your post. I’m not sure who first said it, but it’s like this. We have 24 hours in a day 8 hours for sleep, 8 for work and 8 hours to spend trying to better our lives. Made the best out of your 8 hours. Thank again and have a great day.

  • Brooke says:

    Managing time is definitely something I struggle with every day so I can relate to this one. I just discovered your blog after reading about you in the tribune a few weeks ago. I’m so impressed with you and applaud you for all of your successes. I will definitely be following your blog in the future.

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