Once or Never: 30 hours to rest or find lost time

Do you often say that you don't have time or never to focus on it and "burn out" silently? Read this short article to find out where free hours and minutes are hidden in your schedule.

How to forget the words once or never: we dissect 24 hours and look for free minutes to do everything.

• Do you take on several tasks at the same time?
• Do you combine several professional specialists at work and are you “torn apart" by household chores?
• Are you late everywhere?
• Hours in the day evaporate daily and you are not able to track – where exactly?

Operation In Search of Lost Time begins. Plunge into reading mode as we break down the graph of the average “multitasker”—your graph.

Once or Never:

Why the to-do list never ends and never ends if you go with the flow

To set the direction for finding lost time, you need a map. Map of your time. Something like GoogleMaps of all body movements of every day. From waking up to the moment your head hits the pillow.

Starting with notes

A year and a half to keep records is a long time. We understand that no person in their right mind would keep records of themselves for so long. Therefore, we suggest you take a day to start. This is a test operation to identify patterns. If you can do it, move on to the next step – take a week and record all your activities.

Writing down every step is not easy. There will always be a distraction. But if this is not done, then it will be impossible to influence this factor because you have no time all the time.

On a note

Get two small notepads to take notes. In one, record everything that you have done “after the fact”, and in the other, write down the ideas that are visited during the day. Name them something. For example, a notebook with notes of cases is “Never”, and with ideas – “Never”.

By understanding the anatomy of your 24 hours, you will quickly find lost time. Consider where your 30 hours of free time can hide:

• Where you work less than you tell others about it,
• Where you sleep much more than you think;
• Where you are consumed by social media news feeds.

Watch yourself:

How often do you mean what you say when you say you don't have time? Let's play this game fairly. The phrase “I don't have time” is just an excuse to find something more interesting for yourself, or “more time-consuming” than what is offered to you.

Once or Never: Lost time keeps you from starting to live, but it's not a fatal disease

John Robinson is one of the first US sociologists who began collecting time diaries. He was nicknamed "Papa Time" for this. Based on the data collected, Robinson found that modern man did not work more, as he himself thinks. The number of working hours has decreased, but no one has noticed.

"Daddy Time" claims that you will have 30-40 free hours in your schedule if you study the map of the area of ​​​​your daily activities properly.

We are looking for lost time and set the direction:

Trying to carve out a free 30 minutes to rest, you fail. Again and again. Because you are looking in the wrong place. You can't do the same thing all the time and expect a different result. Take a look at your entries:

• Charging is rest
• Reading is relaxation
• Listen to radio, books, music – relaxation,
• Going to the cinema, to the theater and other leisure activities of this type – rest,
• Lunch at a restaurant – rest,
• Talking on the phone – rest,
• Visiting friends and relatives, even for business purposes – recreation,
• Waiting for technical assistance on the road in a broken car – rest,
• Activities with children – recreation.

The last paragraphs are not very convincing. Right? Robinson would reply that he is not a chronotherapist, but Daddy Time. And this is just a measurement of hours and minutes. Statistics.

In fact, that's what he told the author of I Don't Have Time, Brigitte Schulte, who participated in his research on time and resented the fact that the point of activity with children was dryly marked with a yellow marker as a time for rest. How did it end for her?

For Bridget, the free time operation went better than she expected. She not only learned to manage herself and affairs, but also wrote an entertaining and useful book on time management based on her experience.

Once or Never: Ask Yourself Questions That Heal Time

Let's move on to the final part of our operation "Lost Time". At this stage, healing questions are asked to oneself, the answers to which are paths to your free hours and minutes:

• Why do I feel like I never get things done?
• Why does it bother me that I don't spend enough time with my family? Or why does her absence bother me?
• Is it necessary to clean up the house as often as I do? Or why do I not have enough strength to collect my cozy home universe from the chaos of household chores?
• Why do I think I don't deserve to rest until my household chores are done?
• Why do I take care of all the household chores?

Be honest with yourself. Have a good trip – your free time is very close!

What do you think about this? Is it easy to find answers to healing questions? Have you managed to save at least a day in your notebook? Write in the comments. It is interesting to us.