You will have never have more of the finite resources than you do now

This is more of an extension of my previous article ‘The art of procrastination’. I have had two realizations ever since. 1) You need to steal time for things you love. 2) get away from your to-do list if you have been maintaining one.

You need to be creative with time

In this article, I will focus on the first aspect alone.  You will always have a lot of distractions in life. Ask a stay-at-home person and they would say that all of their time just gets lost in some black hole. You cook food, clean stuff, do the laundry, ready the kids, watch some television or check the social media accounts and the day is over.

However, if you are working full time you just suddenly make time for an 8-9 hour job, where did this time come from? It is simple, all the other activities just get squeezed into the routine somewhere. So that means for all working full-time professionals, we all have approximately 16-18 hours over the weekend for ourselves to pursue our passion and do what we like. Easy, right? Unfortunately, it’s not quite what happens. So what really happens? 

Well, broadly two things occupy your time entertainment and routine household stuff.

Normally the hangover from the entire work–week would occupy a huge mind space, and you ought to unwind a little. And when accessing content is super easy in today’s times, it is difficult to restrain ourselves from reaching that remote. And let’s be honest a little Netflix doesn’t hurt, eh? Let’s find out.

And what about all of those numerous mundane activities that you had pushed throughout the week? It suddenly finds its way through your to-do list and into your chores time. Buy groceries, return that pair of shoes that didn’t fit well, call the maintenance guy to fix that piece of shit that’s broken – you get the drill, don’t you? It’s just a never-ending cycle of things that demand your attention and if you don’t pay much focus your time just gets sucked up by the black hole which we define as procrastination.

But is it you were just being lazy, not picking up your passion over your routine, not prioritizing things or we just never realized the concept of being caught up in the whirlwind. Or we realized, and we never did something about it because hey, I have read all these motivational blogs and stuff but I can’t really deal with it right now and I am just living off one day at a time.

Now I truly believe a lot of us will fall in the latter not being aware of what we want or perhaps how we want to pursue that goal. And probably I don’t know it all either, but I try each day and I evolve and when I feel I have succeeded a little, I share. And I get it, it need not always be a side hustle or about starting your own business, it can be about playing that guitar or rather simple just read the book that you always wanted to or the backyard garden that you wanted to nourish or just bizarre things like contributing on your Google account or reviewing the restaurants you have been to. Anything really, anything that brings you joy.

So I will share two techniques that have worked for me.

1) Prioritizing passion over routine

Trust me you shall always have enough and more routine things in your to-do to focus on, but do you wish to waste time on troubleshooting those or do something more satisfying – your choice – if cleaning house gives you the satisfaction then that’s all right too. Whilst everyone loves a clean house, remember that everything comes at a cost and prioritizing that over your passion might cost you a lot – not in terms of money but in terms of emotions. Just close your eyes and imagine yourself on that deathbed – do you want a clean house or do you want to be reminiscing the memories of the great things you achieved. The choice is yours.
P.S – Also cleaning the house is a metaphor for all things routine, so don’t think I am against cleaning or something, I love doing it but I just realized that I love something else a little more. So I am okay with a few undone dishes and clothes, but not okay to let go of the weekend, and the weekend after the weekend not writing or publishing my blogs.

2) Steal every iota of time, every second counts

When I said earlier you got to steal time, what I meant was you literally have to find time in bizarre stuff – while taking a shower, your thoughts are running wild anyway, probably think of how you can optimize the day to get the most out of today. So you decide on taking a break from your workout routine; there it is your one hour. While in between meetings, if you get this great idea, write it down, discuss it with someone. See if you can finish your work earlier in the day and leave early that one day of the week every week. See if you can do something early morning, if you are a morning person. I am not, but if you are there are a lot of benefits in doing this. See if you find the time during the commute.  While the vegetable is cooking or when you are waiting for something. There is ample time, it just isn’t packed in a beautiful box and presented to you. You just need to ingrain these in your routine practices. And soon you will have ample time. Also, if you binge-watch Netflix, here is a small tip.

While you are watching your favorite show, just towards the last 10-12 minutes, try to context switch to think of what excites you more, what was pressing on your mind since morning, start doing it or if that’s not possible, start thinking about it or start researching on it – trust me, you will not want to continue the next episode even if it ends on a cliffhanger.

That is the power of true passion – you like doing certain things, but love your passion. Now, this comes with practice. You will not switch-off Netflix because I told you to or because you read this article. But you take one small step each day and practice it till you find out what works best for you.

And come on, you love your passion, don’t you? Because that is something unique to you and it defines your personality. And if you don’t really know what you are passionate about just start with something you like – photography, reading, dance, tweeting, singing, something niche perhaps – just start with that and keep doing it, trust me you will find what you are passionate about soon.

Well this is the fourth attempt at writing this article and a zillion thoughts later. I doubt myself in that case – do I really love to write? Or is it just in my mind. Like I literally cleaned the house, then I thought maybe my husband wants to watch our daily quota of Netflix and then I just started cleaning my MacBook like the least important of it all but I did all that so I can escape writing. I don’t know why I keep avoiding it.

Ok, so this is the fifth one and I come back just the next day, which is great. Reason – we woke up and it is a usual Sunday morning and I was going to bury my head in all the routine and we were just discussing on how we can better manage our time over the weekend. To which I said my problem is that I prioritize house cleaning, household stuff before my writing or reading or other personal habits. To which my husband asked me

what is the one thing, which would pain me on Monday morning if I wouldn’t do it.

-Motivational one-liners by my not so philosophical husband

And I think I got my answer it would be THIS, if I am not able to complete this write up I would be quite disappointed. And thus I overcame my laziness or whatever that I was doing to delay the writing. I just took my laptop, wrote the article and there I was done. However I didn’t really publish until almost a month. But I wasn’t really gung-ho on the whole publishing thing, I just wanted to collect my thoughts in one place and really write it down.

And this is the sixth time I actually opened this write-up so I can finish it and only then crash for the day. Did you hear that? As I said it wasn’t the first thing I did today, it is the last and that’s what I need to improve upon. What I have learnt is I need to get better at doing what I want to do the first thing in the day probably after brushing and breakfast. And just do it. And get it out of my mind to be able to cut myself that slack. It’s something you want to love; you aren’t in love with it as of now, but you want to and if you make it a task it becomes one and a burden. So I am far from it being a habit but I am getting a little better each day. And the good thing is I have already published my first article on social media and I promised myself I shall post one each week. I shall keep writing and I need not be perfect about it. It need not be my best article, need not spend crazy hours researching and thinking and rewriting it. I am just going to write it and post it and improve a little every time I do that. Because this way I shall keep doing it and not procrastinate.

So I hope if you read it this far and found my story useful, take a small step and make a habit.