you have a lot more time than you realize

Once in college I grabbed about 6 planners that were being given away for free at a football tailgate and when someone asked me why I needed so many my response was, “I’m really busy.” 

I was at a tailgate so as you can imagine I was intentionally being silly but really I am pretty busy. Everyone is. Putting forth effort and complete focus into a workday is exhausting, having a social life, being a good friend, spending time with family, exercising… Everything takes time. 

Though recently I have been coming to realize that I have a lot more time than I think. We all do. This post won’t include tips on multitasking or prioritizing tasks. Really it’s about being conscious of how much time you have when you stop and think about it.  

This past week I had a laundry list of things I had to get done. Start/complete Christmas shopping, make holiday card, put together last two shelves for my living room, go to the gym (daily), make New Years Eve plans, take MacBook into to Genius Bar, just to name some of the miscellaneous things within my personal life not even considering work.

I had a holiday party to go to last night and Thursday night I thought to myself, “I want to go to this party but I have so many things to do, and once I get home from work I won’t have much time to get anything done.” Then I paused. That’s actually completely untrue. By the time I would get home from work I have heaps of time before I would arrive at the party. It was just a matter of realizing it and using those hours wisely. A couple hours is a lot of time if you plan and use them well.

Now sure I don’t like to have my Friday evening, or any evening, full of a to-do list. Sometimes I just want to do nothing. That’s totally fine. But when you do have things that need to get done simply pausing can make you see you in fact have much more time than you realize. You just need to realize it and plan to use it wisely.