I don't have time
In the last 3 years I am involved in a lot of activities inside and outside the office. Work as employee, work as a freelancer and build a strong social profile, build 2 startups, study, workout, private life...manage all of these things is not easy.
Friends and colleagues frequently ask to me “How do you find time and energy to work on all this things?”.
I always answered in a generic way because I never understand the question. All of us have the exactly same 24h per day. Assuming we sleep 8h per night, we have 16h. We have to work or we have to study so we spend 8h to do these things. We have left 8h. Maybe your home is far way from you office/school/whatever so, I think 2h is enough time to manage these travel. In the end we have 6h per day to do our personal stuff like run a business, workout, spend time with family.
Keep follow me. If you multiply these 6h per day for 5 working day (Monday to Friday), the result will be 30 hour per week. To this result we can add the free week end hours.
Assuming that we have 8h free every Saturday and Sunday. In the and we have 46h per week totally free to do what we have to do and what we want to do.
What we do with that time is our choice. I don’t like the phrase I don’t have time because it encourages us to think of our time as something outside our control. When we say “I don’t have time”, it absolves us of responsibility and functions as an easy excuse. But if we reframe it as I am choosing not to make the time, it reminds us that what we do with our time is our choice.
So how do I have the time to supposedly do so much stuff? Firstly, I think of my time as something in my control. Whatever I do is what I am choosing to do. Other than simply reframing ‘I don’t have time’ as ‘I am choosing not to make the time’, I’ve developed a few other time management tips/hacks that will be the subject of a YouTube video at some point.
So what can we take away from this post? Next time we find ourselves thinking ‘I want to do X but I don’t have the time’, we can remind ourselves that how we spend our time is almost entirely in our own control. Instead of saying ‘I don’t have the time’, we can tell ourselves ‘I am actively choosing not to make the time’. If we do that, we might find that time disappears from our internal list-of-excuses that prevents us from doing worthwhile things.
Thank you and see you soon! ????
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