How do you manage your time?

Post date: 2021-11-26 06:10:26

Hey, busy Mefites. How do you organise your work and life calendars? I am busy and overly scheduled all the time, and it's exhausting. I thought it would be good to see how other busy people structure their lives, to see if there's anything I could be doing better.

I'm busy all the time. Work is hectic, but apart from work, I also have to attend to basic life admin as well as social things, and I end up with a calendar that is jam-packed with commitments and very little free time.

I work long hours, my job is very intense and demanding, and I have a long commute. I have managed to negotiate HARD for a day a week working at home. I spend my time outside work either doing errands or doing other life stuff like exercise classes and socialising. I honestly don't think I DO that much with my life but I seem to be busy all the time, attending to things like going to the post office to return a parcel or cleaning the house or doing financial admin for my family. I also try to go to yoga classes a couple of times a week and I try to keep up with my friends. I live alone and have no real support network, so maintaining my social relationships is a necessity as well as something I like doing.

I'm not complaining; I'm grateful for my friends and to have multiple reasons to get out of bed and out of the house. So, what's the problem?

Firstly I feel tired after such overly scheduled days. I stay up too late at night because it's my only free unstructured time, and then I feel tired again the next day, it's a vicious cycle.

Secondly I have very little flexibility when it comes to anything 'popping up'. I can't do anything spontaneous and this is annoying. It also annoys my friends - 'Unicorn chaser is so busy you have to schedule things with them months in advance' is a common complaint.

Thirdly, and this is a little vague - I feel like I am so busy with day to day stuff but I'm not really DOING anything big with my life? Because I'm so busy keeping up with the day to day, I rarely have time to think about the bigger picture and where I would like to be and what I should be doing to get there. Which of course AskMe can't necessarily help me with, I realise.

There's also this mild sense of inferiority, like: other people manage families, children, pets, and I'm run off my feet just managing myself.

So I thought it could be a useful exercise to understand how other people organise their time outside work. Do you keep a day a week sacrosanct from all obligations? Do you let chores or other things fall by the wayside? How do you manage things that just 'pop up'? How do you find time to yourself to just BE?

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