Free time?
The older I get, the more freedom I gain – though somehow, the less free time I have. It has become more of a question than anything, a constant on my to-do list that ultimately stresses me out rather than offering me the sweet relief that I so desperately am deprived of. Free time feels less and less real the more I work for it, becoming distant enough that not even my less busy days have time to retrieve it. I have been attempting to be more intentional with making it a non-negotiable in my day rather than something that I have to work for, and these are a couple of the things I have noticed:
The Present
This is, in my current perspective, the most contributing factor to my dilemma. I have noticed that the more I lust after free time and place it as a future activity, the further it makes its way down the line of living it. It just continues to be something in the future rather than something that I just do. Living in the future takes away from not only free time, but from truly experiencing anything to its most rich extent.
To combat this, I have started to implement this into my daily life:
- Having both a daily task list and a longer to-do list: the keyword daily is essential. I do not put things that I know are not doing to get done that day, no matter how sad and un-accomplishing it looks. I have felt more accomplished since doing this as it is an attainable goal rather than overestimating my abilities and therefore feeling unproductive. The longer to-do list serves its purpose to remind me from time-to-time of other things that I need/want to do and is something that I do not always get to but can still store the information without feeling overwhelmed. Since doing this, free time has never felt so deserved and I don’t find myself looking into what I have to do for days on end after.
The tells
Are you doing what you really want to be doing in your free time? Or are you doing what you think you want to be doing? This is an ongoing journey for myself, having countless hobbies that I have claimed, while not really doing any of them. I have started to pay more attention to what helps me to feel rested and to what makes me energized. Neither of these, in my opinion, is better than the other but they are two different things. There are some activities that can be seen as resting since they are sitting down and/or are portrayed to be calm and easy, like many crafts/creative activities, but really, they do require some thinking – no matter how fun that thinking is. There are also some free time activities that are not necessarily mindless but allow your mind to rest. These are great for after doing a long day of classes or having a test, because no matter how tempting it is to do something creative that you can show afterwards, sometimes what you really need is just to read or watch a movie.
This is what I have done to pick up on these:
- Keeping track of how I feel after doing something that I love, and what I felt before. Doing this allows me to learn the relationship between the before and after and how my free time activity effected it.
- Making some sort of catalogue that allows me to categorize what I like to do based on feeling so that when I do have my free time, I don’t waste it on trying to decide.
Conclusion
These are just a couple of my habits that I have been implementing and have been turning my free time around so that I actually feel like I experience it. A lot of this is subjective and really depends on how your own schedule works so taking the underlying message and translating it to your own life will likely be the most effective! Organization is a key factor and finding a website/planner that works for me has been the biggest game changer in allowing me to compile everything, so I highly recommend spending the time to find one that you really like. Good luck and happy free time! <3