“I don’t have the time”, is a sentence that we hear almost every day. I used to say it too, until I realized what it really meant.
The next time you hear someone say that phrase, or that you say it yourself, just start thinking about what you or that person does that is not essential to life. Watching TV/Netflix, surfing the internet, taking a nap in the middle of the day, taking a car ride, drinking alcoholic beverages, playing video games, etc. And you’ll soon find out that the problem is not a lack of time, but rather from a lack of interest and motivation for the said activity.
Everyone’s day has the same length, we just don’t use this time in the same ways, and this isn’t the problem. The problem is that we convince ourselves and others that we don’t have the time, when in reality, we just don’t care enough to make place in our “schedule”.
It all comes back to something that I talked about in a previous article, that each individual (adult) is responsible for its own current situation, that our choices made us who we are. Having time is also a choice that we make. So you decide to spend all your weekends playing video games, then good for you, but don’t tell me that you don’t have the time to clean your apartment or go to the gym. You have the time to do it, you just don’t care enough to do it.
So, why am I telling you this? Because I used to be that way, I used to think that I didn’t have time to do many things, until I started analyzing how I managed my time and realized that I could make better use of it, and accomplish important things instead of wasting my time being convinced that I am busy. And it started by removing this sentence from my head and vocabulary.
Then, when we realize that we indeed have the time, we have to plan a little. The way I do it is pretty simple, it consists of finding what activities can be reduced/removed and which ones should be added. I make a list of the things I want to do, because having a clear list feels more real than vague ideas. When we know what we want to do and what we want to not do, all that is left to do is to make a small daily schedule and place the activities and tasks that we want to do, this way we know exactly what we have to do and waste less time.
Even though it seems too simple, it actually works, but it requires some ass kicking to doing it.