You haven’t got time for much, especially not that. You’re doing everything. You’re studying, you’ve got a job, you’ve got kids, you’ve got friends, family, you have your TV shows. You have a lot of things that take your time. Many of them necessarily, most because you let them. You’re bullied around by your “obligations”. You even call them “obligations” only further calcifying them. Yes, you have to take the kids to school. No, you don’t have to watch the news.
Time and Priorities
When someone says they don’t have time, they are usually lying. They are primarily lying to themselves. They have as much time as you do. As much time as everyone does. 24 hours in a day, and 7 days in a week. The difference between you and them is what you each prioritise. They prioritise their job and family, you prioritise yours. They can’t catch up for lunch with you, not because they don’t have time, but because you’re not a priority.
This may sound harsh, but in reality, it’s not. Even if the fact they don’t prioritise you is an indication that they don’t respect you at all, which it’s usually (and mistakenly) taken to mean, just means they won’t see you. You end up spending less time with someone who doesn’t respect you. Win-win. However, it’s not all black and white, things fall on a spectrum of importance and prioritisation. You’re maybe less important than their children they have to pick up for a dance rehearsal, but more important than a work colleague who also asked if they could go for lunch.
As we noted in the beginning, your time is not taken only by people, but also by activities and tasks. You have to exercise. You have to go to the supermarket to buy groceries. You have to… you don’t have to do either of those listed activities. It may be beneficial to exercise but you don’t have to. You can just purchase your groceries online. Do you prioritise the time it takes to drive to the supermarket and pick out your items or the added cost of paying for delivery and online ordering? Nothing’s as black and white as you might think.
Making time
I’ve only recently began working full-time since I finished university for the year. One thing that has struck me is that you feel like you have less time. It is true too. You are at work most of the day and can’t do much in the way of working on hobby projects or endeavours. It always used to frustrate me when adults said “I don’t have time to read”, when it was clear and obvious they did! They just didn’t prioritise it. In order to write this blog post, the first in a while I’ll admit, I had to prioritise writing this over playing Playstation, watching Netflix, as well as more positively judged activities such as reading. I’ll be honest, it wasn’t easy to take action on that prioritisation. Do I regret it now that I’m 400+ words in? Absolutely not. I may have regretted playing playstation though.
Checklists are a good way to prioritise things. You feel accomplished in ticking things off, you ensure you don’t miss anything and you can even add items that are on the epicurean side… at the bottom of course. I recommend The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande if you wish to learn how to write good checklists and how they’re used to master all sorts of processes.
What I’m making time for:
Next on my list of things to make time for is, remaking this blog. I’ll write the code that runs this blog, remove WordPress (it’s slow and expensive), so you’ll be able to see blog posts quicker than ever. It may be without features to begin with, but I’m writing it here to allow social pressure to get to me. I’ll also write a few blog posts on my progress.
