Does unscheduled time show up for you very often? You know, 2 hours with nothing to do and the freedom to do whatever you want. I’m guessing it doesn’t show up in your work hours and not during after hours, either. (Are there after hours anymore?) Everyone has a never ending list of things to do, and if we don’t want to do them, we look at Facebook, surf the web, or check out a youtube video.
Do you know why we don’t have any free time? Stay with me here if it seems pretty obvious – because we don’t schedule it. And, why don’t we schedule it? Because, we think it is ludicrous to have to schedule “unscheduled time”. Yup. So, why don’t we have any?
Let’s untie this crazy bundle. We used to have unscheduled time. It may go back to high school, but we had it at some point. Then, what happened? We got harder classes, work, families, harder or more complicated jobs that demanded more. We added more forms of communication. Cell phones, smart phones, texting, Facebook, youtube, twitter. And, more to come.
If you don’t have discipline around how you are scheduling your time, including how much time you will now allot to all this communication, excuse me for saying this – you lose. You have handed your power away to a medium that will not help you focus on your goals, the people you care about, your ability to make a difference or to be successful in this world.
Please, put time in your calendar for breathing, thinking, staring at clouds. It could be you go for a walk every morning at 10 am for 15 minutes. Or, you make it part of private work time several times each week. I am serious. Put it on your schedule. It is up to you how to use it.
image courtesy of http://www.lifescience.com