How To Cultivate Your Free Time and Have Less Stuff to Do

 

Valuing time over money consistently shows greater happiness…

There are literally thousands of media pieces on how to get more done with your day, how to be more efficient, how to get more done with less time. The point is that we all seem to have too much stuff to do!

Here are some “Time Creator” tips that you may want to consider:

Cultivate quality leisure time. A 2013 study revealed that the most truly “time-poor” group of people were working parents. They found that when they had leisure time, they were either bored or they were stressed.

This is a phenomenon that you may have experienced in your life as well. You reach a public holiday, you wanted a day off, then you don’t really know what to do. Even though you may be constantly thinking about how much you love free time, when you actually get it, you don’t know what to do.

If you aren’t cultivating your free time, you will always feel like you don’t have enough time…

You won’t feel rested and you won’t feel restored because you aren’t resting and you aren’t restoring.

Treat your weekends like a vacation. Researchers suggest that you plan out what your weekends are going to look like. If you’re a type-A person, go ahead and plan it out in detail but keep in mind that overscheduling and creating pressure over time can suck the enjoyment out of it.

Aim for a rough plan like going to the beach on Saturday morning and sunset and coffee on Sunday.

Not surprisingly, researchers have also found that free time that’s spent on active activities like exercising or connecting or even volunteering tends to be much more fulfilling than the free time that’s spent on passive activities like Netflix.

There are times when passive activities like TicToc or Netflix are most enjoyable. However, spending an afternoon in nature with friends can be far more beneficial.

Have an Overwhelm Routine. When we are busy and feel we are overwhelmed, we tend to take on more tasks. Studies show that, when we do this, we take on more easy-to-complete tasks because they help us to feel more “in control” when we are in a state of overwhelm — which is when we need control the most.

I’ve noticed that when I have 5 things on my plate instead of my usual 3, I get the urge to clean my fridge. Or I finally decide to call and get the bump on my car fixed. This is literally me practicing self-sabotage.

Often, it’s not the actual tasks on your plate that are causing the overwhelm, it’s how you feel about the tasks…

You probably feel confused or frantic or a little panicked. To combat this overwhelm, create an Overwhelm Routine and make sure that it’s somewhere obvious that you can access it with ease.

A good Overwhelm Routine would probably include taking a breath, doing a “brain dump”, deleting, delegating, and prioritizing.

Find your “enough” number and find your “ideal” number. Millionaires are only a tiny bit happier than the regular person, but we continue to prioritize money over time. Sometimes it begs the question — “what is it all for?”

Sit down and create an “enough number”. This is the number that covers the bills, regular expenses, savings, and fun weekends.

Then you can figure out your “ideal” number. This is the number that lets you spend on those extras that you want in life.

Set a goal to reach your ideal number, but stop as soon as you start feeling a need for more. In most cases, the more money you earn, the more stress you inherit, and the less time you have.

Create an aversion to a busy culture. An example of this would be to not be emailing back and forth with your coworkers during weekends or vacation.

Personally, I find that a lot of people email with clients and coworkers outside of work hours just to look really busy. When someone is emailing outside of working hours, we should not be impressed, we should be worried.

Create filtering questions for your goals and the projects you are taking on. Following are some questions you might ask when you come across an opportunity:

• Will this activity or effort make the highest possible contribution to my goal?
• What problems do I want?
• Am I the best person to be doing this?
• Is it a “hell yes”, if not, it’s a no.
• How do I want to spend my days? Will this violate that?

Create clear and strong cut-off times and deadlines, then back them up with boundaries. Boundaries aren’t just telling yourself that you won’t respond to emails past 5 pm, it’s also deleting the email app on your phone past 5 pm.

Prioritize maximizers. People who value their time prioritize tasks and activities that get them more time — creating templates, procedures, and checklists focusing on their goals all fall into this category.

Delegate. If you have the means to delegate, do it. If you don’t have the means to delegate, see if you can ask for help.

80/20 Your tasks. On a piece of paper, brainstorm the things that you spend the most time on. Of those tasks, highlight the things that create the biggest outcomes for you — the things that create the most time, the most money, and the most energy in your life. Make it your mission to delegate or reduce what’s left.

Your free time is precious, treat it like it’s precious.