Once upon a time I woke up and realized that I was overbooked, overtired and unhappy. I was saying "yes" to too many things I did not actually want to do. That meant I was saying "no" to things I DID want to do. And I was failing to make a habit out of doing things that I knew would make me happier (like making myself go to sleep at a decent hour).
That's when my world was rocked by the whole idea of time management. We're all given 168 Hours in a week, a book I read pointed out. How we use them is entirely up to us.
OK, that's not entirely true. Yes, there are some things we HAVE to do. We have to earn money so we can eat. We have to take care of our human or pet children so we aren't guilty of neglect. We have to sleep at night even if we'd rather not.
But even if you add up all the time you spend on doing those things, you still have time left over. Let's say you work full time -- eight hours a day. Let's say you spend two hours on each end of that doing kid care and house stuff -- we're up to 12. Let's say you actually get eight hour of sleep a night. That's 20 hours. You officially have four hours left over for whatever it is you want to do.
How will you use it? Watching Netflix? Going to the gym? Reading a book? Messing in your garden? Taking a long walk?
You don't have to justify what you choose. It's totally up to you. But you DO have a choice.
And what if you could make the things you do in those eight hours of work and four hours of household or kid stuff bring you more joy or take less time? What would you use that extra time for?
Enter military spouse support non-profit In Dependent's March self-care topic of the month: time management. And the discussion is being orchestrated by none other than your's truly.
When you hear people talk about "time management" you often hear them use the word "productivity." I won't lie -- I love that word. But the truth is that using your time well doesn't have to be about productivity at all, unless productivity is what makes you happy.
Time management should be about doing whatever makes you happy. And if that means you find an extra hour in your day to binge watch Fuller House, than so be it.
So how do you make this happen? Well, that's exactly what we're talking about this month over at In Dependent. You can read a blog post by me, get book recommendations (yes, I promise you have time to read them) and listen to a podcast where I talk (briefly! - so, yes, you have time to listen) to time management guru Laura Vanderkam and happiness expert Gretchen Ruben ... because time management means nothing if you don't know what makes you happy. We'll also be hosting a live discussion later this month via Google hangouts. All of this is totally free.
You don't want to miss this! Head on over and sign up today.
Photo courtesy of Flickr user Robert Couse-Baker via the Creative Commons license.
