Time…What are we doing with it?

This post is not to make anyone guilty. It is just things that I have noticed about myself even though I, mostly, say “you” when I’m speaking about myself.

As I get older time seems to be less and less plentiful, but why is that? There are some people that look like they have it all figured out because they find the time to do so many things and I wonder when they find the time to sleep! I am reading several leadership books right now and it amazes me that these people not only find the time to be CEOs of huge companies, have families, writes books about leadership, but they also (somehow) find the time to meditate. I am not sure how to meditate. I wish that I could quiet my mind, but I just don’t know how. I know that it takes practice and it is something that I feel like it would be useful for me, but I use the excuse of “I just don’t have the time to sit and do nothing.” 

Speaking of excuses, one that I feel like I and MANY other people are using right now is the excuse of self-care. Don’t get me wrong, self-care is extremely important. I feel like I am using it as an excuse to vegetate and not feel guilty about it, though. There are many things that could and should be done like cleaning out my closet, giving my bathroom a good scrub, vacuuming my stairs, etc. Of course, these are not my favorite things to do, not by a long shot. Do I have the time to do them, sure? But these things don’t get done because I use “me time” as my excuse to sit and binge watch Netflix and be on my phone. 

When I actually have things to do it is amazing how productive I can be. Let me give you this example: I am doing a couple books clubs at work (not surprising since I’m a librarian). One of the book clubs is on leadership and we are currently reading Dare to Lead by Brene Brown. The woman that put this book club together is a branch manager so I figured that if I joined not only would I get to read books that I might not otherwise have had the opportunity to read but I would also have the chance to engage with people from different branches that I don’t get to on a regular basis.  I got the book last week and had plenty of opportunity to read the first section, but I didn’t. I kept putting it off for no reason other than I’m lazy. For the book club we were sent worksheets the asked us questions about vulnerability (the focus of the first part of the book). I didn’t read the assigned chapters until today and I brought the worksheets with me to work and filled them out. The book club is tomorrow. I have everything I need to have done for it, but why did I feel the need to put it off as long as I did? Because the opportunity was there. It isn’t like I’m not looking forward to going to this book club. I really am. I am excited to see the different perspectives that everyone brings. I feel like if we have the opportunity to put something off, we always will, though and I really wish that weren’t the case.

One reason that I think that it is so easy to put things off and take “me time” is because of Netflix. I love Netflix, but it has made it so much easier to sit on the couch and binge watch random shows without a second thought. Let’s face it, we have all lost hours, days & weeks to Netflix. I am not anti-Netflix by any means (I LOVE Stranger Things), but I know that before Netflix was around if there wasn’t anything that I wanted to watch on TV I would turn it off and do something else. That isn’t even an option anymore because there is always something that you want to watch on. I don’t want to get rid of my television, but I do appreciate when people don’t have them. I feel like they are always there and always on. I am not sure if I could fall asleep without mine. I turn on Bob’s Burgers to fall asleep every night.

I said at the beginning that self-care is important, but is binge watching Netflix really self-care? I know that many people say that self-care and me time is whatever you want it to be. While we do sometimes need to take some time to not really think especially if we have stressful jobs how much time is enough time and when do we just start using “me time” as an excuse? How many times have you said, “I need time to decompress” or “I’m resting” when watching TV and/or you’re on your phone? While, yes, physically you are resting but that isn’t necessarily a good thing for most of us. Let’s face it, most of us could do with a little more exercise. What we aren’t resting is our minds. Scrolling through Instagram thinking things like, “I wish I was having that much fun right now,” “they could have invited me,” or something even more destructive. 

What are some more beneficial self-care habits that we can adopt? https://tinybuddha.com/blog/45-simple-self-care-practices-for-a-healthy-mind-body-and-soul/ Tiny Buddha has 15 activities for the mind, the body and the soul. I’m not saying that you should give up watching TV. I’m not going to, but maybe consciously try to spend less time in front of a screen. I appreciate the fact that now iPhones are now telling you each week how much time you spent on your phone. I didn’t really think about it before I started getting weekly notifications. And when I make the excuse of “I don’t have time for that” and I see how much time I spend scrolling through my news feed and I realize that I have a huge amount of time that I am not really doing much with.