When I have things I want to do but don’t, I claim it’s because I “don’t have time.” To be honest, that’s a bullshit excuse. Sure, some things are more time consuming than others. Sure, I am pretty hard pressed for time sometimes. I do work a lot, sometimes more than 50 hours a week. However, let’s just do the math here. In one week, there’s 168 hours. Let’s say I work 50, and sleep 7 hours a night (when I’m working a lot, I don’t actually sleep that much. It’s between 3-6 hours of sleep a night), and spend about 10 hours a week getting ready for work/driving/taking the bus. With all of that, there’s still 59 hours left in the week!! That’s a lot of time! So what do I do with that time? Mostly, I say I’m “relaxing” because I’m working so much that week, which entails watching Netflix and knitting or playing video games. Most specifically, I’ve been playing a lot of Minecraft.
Is that a problem? Not exactly, but it does mean I’m lying to myself when I tell myself I don’t have time for other things. Like writing for example. I could be writing, which I haven’t done in many months. Maybe it’s because I haven’t been inspired to write my novels and I don’t know where to go next. But I could be blogging. I haven’t been blogging for a really long time. Obviously, since this blog hadn’t been updated for a year until recently. I go through stages of writing though, and it’s been that way for years, ever since I was a teenager. I’ll write a lot for a while, and then I’ll just stop until I pick it up again.
Other things I could be doing include building my business. I claim I haven’t had the time to spend on marketing, but I stopped putting effort into it after a while. Even if I just did a little bit every day, it would be a slower build, but it would at least be something. But I was trying to do too much at once with working two other jobs and I found myself overwhelmed and stopped completely. I have this problem when I do things that I need to do everything at 200% speed and perfection and when I find myself failing at maintaining that standard I stop doing it, instead of changing what I’m doing to be more effective.
I could be going to the gym on the regular. Lately I’ve been put out by a back problem from moving and now I’ve been sick so I can’t go until I’m healed from that or else I’ll just get sick again. But before this, I hadn’t been going to the gym because I was constantly feeling tired. But that’s because I don’t sleep much when I work a lot, so I create this problem myself. I could get adequate sleep and still have time to work a lot and go to the gym.
Obviously, I need to create better habits for myself, and better time management. If something isn’t working, I need to adjust what I’m doing to be more effective and efficient, instead of giving up on it completely to play Minecraft instead. This is going to become even more important as I work two part time jobs and go to school with four classes. I’ll still have the time to do those things, and other things I deem as important, with down “relaxing” time as well.
I just need to lay off the bullshit excuse that I don’t have time. (It also sucks when you have so many interests!)
Photo courtesy of Morguefile.
Honey & Chocolate 