Do you want to learn how to get more time for yourself? Most people would appreciate having more leisure time, yet few know how. These simple ways may help.
“It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
Simple Tips to Get More Time for Yourself
Even if you want more time for yourself, there are still only 24 hours in a day. You may wish to extend time or make it go slower, faster, or reverse. Unfortunately, that is impossible.
Yet time is amazing, and maximizing what you have is the key to happiness. However, whether you’re overwhelmed at work, home, or elsewhere, you can reclaim more time and put breathing room back in your life. Here’s how.
You Must Reorganize
While you can’t add or subtract hours in your day, you can determine what’s necessary and desirable and whether it advances your goals. Briefly, you are trying to discover your potential so you can succeed.
- First, figure out what’s essential.
- Next, decide what you can do today.
- Also, consider tasks or projects that help you be the best you can be. You should make time for things that promote your spiritual, emotional, psychological, and career growth.
- Besides, you can discover a spare hour or two. It all boils down to reorganization.
The core of reorganization involves the ability to prioritize. This means deliberately and consciously assigning everything according to what must be done, what should be done, what can wait, what you want to do, and what you may need help with to finish. It also means learning how to procrastinate less and accomplish more.
Crucial Tip:
Make yourself the top priority. This doesn’t mean you take time for yourself first, but that you list yourself first. Giving yourself a top ranking means you will make time in the day to do what matters to you.
Create a Strategy So You Get More Time for Yourself
Everyone has at least one super-important goal they want to achieve. Others have several. Whatever it is, you’ll need to map out a strategy for accomplishing what you want, because all your goals need good plans. Therefore, the next step is to look at your listed items and determine where they fit in your long-term planning.
- Do they help you get closer to realizing your goal?
- Are they filler material, busy work, or something that’s accumulated over time, and now you’re expected to do?
- On the other hand, are some things that challenge you to go beyond your comfort zone, present you with opportunities to learn and gain or perfect a skill?
Suppose your list includes things that do nothing to help you achieve your goals. Consider eliminating them. Now, you automatically have more breathing room. However, you may need to adjust to things you must do for your job, family, or other reasons.
Allocate a Day with Nothing Scheduled
Sometimes you need a day with nothing on the schedule. The excitement comes when you see where the day takes you. You may think taking a day off is self-indulgence. However, if you’re at burnout or work is ineffective, a day off is precisely what you need. This is a proactive way to recover from stress and burnout.
- So, the day starts with no activities planned. See how you feel. What do you want to do today?
- And, while you’re at it, contemplate when, if ever, you’ve given yourself the freedom to do whatever you want?
- What you’ll find is that you’ll gravitate toward some nourishing and life-affirming activities. This may mean self-care or pampering, spending time on a hobby, going for a walk, taking in a movie, visiting a café with friends, planning a holiday vacation, or even preparing a meal just for you.
Crucial Tip:
Time is like water. It finds a way around anything in its path and fills any void. By making time when your schedule is empty, you’ll feel energized and fulfilled doing whatever makes you feel good. And that’s how you get more time for yourself in the best possible way.
Nurture Yourself with Morning and Evening Routines
How you start and end each day should be an essential part. Rituals have enormous power to enrich your life. Creating nurturing routines for morning and night is one of the easiest to accomplish and most likely to succeed. These can be simple and uncomplicated.
Easy Morning Ritual
- Setting up your morning coffee routine so it’s a no-brainer when you wake up gives you the caffeine head-start without extra steps when you’re still waking up. I drink green tea in the morning, while my spouse has espresso. I arrange everything so it’s ready to go, including my tea bag, cups, Stevia in the Raw, honey, and lemon for me.
- Note that this is just one example many can relate to, yet it also works for other comforting morning rituals.
Easy Evening Ritual
However, what you do before going to bed is equally important. Now is when you want to unwind and allow your mind to drift, not tax it with an unrelenting list of what you must tackle tomorrow.
- Take a leisurely soaking bath, meditate, relax with an engrossing book, listen to soothing music – you get the idea. This ritual is one of life’s simple pleasures that everyone can enjoy, don’t you agree?
- Laying out your wardrobe for the morning, tending to your grooming basics, and getting into your comfortable go-to-sleep environment is both nurturing and nourishing. It also primes your subconscious and your body to recharge and rebuild.
To Get More Time for Yourself, Remember Your Journey is Yours
So, what if your brother-in-law is a millionaire and he’s not yet 30? What difference does it make if your co-worker breezes through assignments and tends to lord it over you? Shortcuts and quick routes to success may seem ideal, yet you know that achieving worthwhile goals requires putting in the effort to do it right. Only then will you feel like you’ve accomplished what you set out to do.
Comparing your progress to others is futile. It also wastes precious time and does nothing to assist you in making progress toward what matters most to you.
Crucial Tip:
Celebrate your small wins by taking the time to appreciate them. This self-affirmation motivates you to continue. Furthermore, it puts time in perspective. You have one life to live, and it’s your life, not anyone else’s. Keep this foremost, and do more of what you want. You’ll find it easier to get more time for yourself and live a happy and more productive life.
