We all have 24 hours in the day and we all have agency over how we spend that time. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that somehow you are special and busier than anyone else. We all have piles of to-do’s, family and work obligations, cleaning/household admin duties. We can try to be more efficient and assign every minute of the day a task. Although, somehow this seems to rob the joy from life when we micromanage our moments and schedule. So what can we do to help? When you feel stressed that there is not enough time in the day (1) Acknowledge your limitations and face the monster head-on (2) Double down on self-care (3) Speed date your tasks
You do not have time to do everything well so choose what matters most to you. You could be running a self-defeating script in your head about how overwhelmed you are with all of the things you still need to get done. OR you could empower yourself by stating that you DO have time for the things you want in life and you CHOOSE to not do the other things. Put what you value first, then let go of the guilt. It looks like this… Today I am prioritizing my family and I choose to not work from home. It is my life and time with my family comes first, especially around the holidays. I have more than enough time to bake with my kids, call my mom, and then tidy the house so we can enjoy a night of rest together. This is my life and I deserve to enjoy it. Tomorrow I can choose to prioritize work as my career is ultimately fulfilling for me. I will accept a certain amount of drudgery that comes along with my work, or if I can’t, I will work toward building a new career or way to make money for the future. Take back your power. No one can make you do anything that you do not choose to do. Own that.
For full mastery, you need to lean into the hard things. For people in traditional caregiver roles, self-care may be the first thing that gets tabled when life is hectic and quite frankly I agree that it is the hardest thing for us to commit to doing. Self-care is a time multiplier and the ultimate productivity hack. It is not a luxury, it is a necessity. It is hard to put this above other things when you feel like your life is on fire and quite frankly that is why your life is on fire. Meditation increases grey matter in your hippocampus and increases activity in your left prefrontal cortex. This boosts your happiness, memory, learning/recall, attention span. It also helps you fall asleep faster and boosts your quality of sleep. Breathing techniques such as Wym Hoff bolster your immune system and allow you to remain calm in the face of excess cortisol and stress. Alternate nostril breathing or extending your exhalation longer than your inhalation balances your brain and body and activates your parasympathetic system. This effectively takes you out of the 24-7 stress state that we all contend with. Productive meditation ( aka focusing on one problem in your head while walking and not allowing your mind to wander) teaches you how to single task. A rare and valuable skill in today’s world. Yoga integrates movement and emotion, clears your energy channels, and teaches you how to breathe more effectively. Intentionally breathing slowly (5 breaths a minute) puts your body in coherence where all your physiologic functions are functioning optimally. These are non-negotiables in our fast-paced society.
Finally, there are two main ways of looking at your tasks. You can either work on one task at a time to completion (preferred by many) or speed date your tasks (preferred by me). If I spend my whole day organizing my closet, I do feel good that I finished a task but when you have 50 other equally important things to do in a day – this is unfortunately not reality. My preferred method is to group all of my tasks for the day into broad categories and then commit a variable amount of time to each category. For example, I have 20 minutes for household tasks and I see how much I can get done and then I MOVE ON. I then have 40 minutes for wrapping or online Christmas shopping, then I move to the next task. I prefer to make a small amount of progress on each category so I feel that I am not missing anything. It is ok if I have unfinished things each day, we all do. I celebrate the progress I have made on many small things. For someone with a mountain of to-do’s this can ultimately be more effective as you touch something in each category almost every day. It also teaches you to work on the non-urgent, unimportant life goals as these get a category too (instead of prioritizing things like the laundry that get added to your list again and again every day).
Know you have agency over your life. Choose what you think is important for you and do it. It is not your responsibility to make other people happy with you, you only need to be happy with yourself. So instead of whining about all the things you have to do and how you have no time to do it. Know that you are stronger for facing the adversity this life brings and that you get to wake up every day and you get to choose the things you put on your plate. Make today, your day and prioritize what you want for your life and be grateful for the difference you can make.