The feeling is overwhelming, the concept is nothing new, but regardless of how cliché it is I constantly struggle with the feeling that there are just not enough hours in the day to accomplish all that I want to do.

In an attempt to satisfy my cravings in life I have over committed myself and started to loose control of my time. Somewhere along the line I’ve started to sidetrack the things that are most important to me- spending time with my family, boyfriend, and friends, writing, feeding my spirituality, building my business, and enjoying new experiences life, to take on roles that add value to my life but invaluably consume vast amounts of time in the process.

Right now, my biggest time consumer is my 8-4 job working at a small private University.

I love connecting with the students, and my co-workers are all very pleasant, but my position leaves me deprived of the more interesting aspects of working at a University in a way encourages me to live anxiously awaiting the weekends so I can finally spend time on my own terms.

When I first started feeling overwhelmed by my perceived lack of time, the first thought I had was to quit my job. That was of course until I realized that in spite my small paychecks, I enjoyed a consistent cash flow and was not yet prepared for the responsibilities of quitting my day job. With that thought, I decided to consider the following suggestions to take control of my time and redesign my daily approach to my schedule. Investing the energy to creatively brainstorm new approaches to my current schedule has been an effective start to spending my days more meaningfully. After all, having an extra helping of time would be nice, but 24 hours a day is all any of us get!

• Budget your time like you should be budgeting your money, start with what’s most meaningful to you and work from there. Some of the best advice I’ve gotten about budgeting is to allocate money each month by starting with the items that I find most meaningful. Doing so returns spending power to the rightful owner, me. Rather than feeling forced to spend my money on my most crucial bills, I decide what is most important to me and cut back expenses on everything else. Although a simple paradigm shift, it’s more empowering to think about spending time and money to pay for that 3 story house when you either acknowledge that the house was part of your dream life, or downsize. The key here is that how you invest your time and how you spend your money are YOUR decisions; don’t let anybody, or any job take that away from you.

• Set Aside Time to Breathe and Just Be Still. I know, I know. The first time I heard this I thought the barer of information was crazy too. When you feel like you don’t have enough hours in the day the last thing you want to do is “waste” time doing nothing. Contrary to popular belief, taking time to relax and just breathe allows us to refocus and in turn become more productive people. By stepping back from your daily ritual you will start to sort through which things are really priorities in your life and which things you are allowing to cause you undo stress. It is important to send out that letter your boss has been fussing about for the past week, but it’s not so urgent that you can’t spend 5 minutes to take a brisk walk, refocus, and stop worrying about writing the letter so that you just get it done. After all, if it was really THAT urgent you would have mailed it out a week ago.

• Think about time in relation to meaningfulness and enjoyment, not busyness. “When busyness is the measure of time, no matter how much time exists it is never enough.”
–Diana Hunt

• Be present in the moment. One of the biggest ways to waste time is to constantly allow distractions. When you sit down to have lunch with a friend focus on your interaction rather than being sidetracked by the constant flow of business emails streaming into your Blackberry. In the same manner, when you sit to complete a task at work focus on giving it your full attention until you have it complete. By staying focused you are showing that each interaction is meaningful enough to you to give it your full attention. If this is not the case, you should really evaluate if it is important enough to be consuming any of your valuable time at all.

“Time management is life management, from the inside out. It’s an INSIDE job. You already have everything you need. You have the power to create a life of meaning, fulfillment and joy.”
– Higher Awareness

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