Feeling short on time? Do a time audit
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Why do so many people feel they don’t have enough time?
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I mean the basic question here I think is a lot of us are doing too much. How do we do less? Is this something that comes up a lot with your clients?
Yes. And it doesn't come up directly, but people come in feeling anxious, stressed, depleted. And when I sit with them and talk to them about what their life looks like, it feels like they're on this hamster wheel. They never can catch up. And oftentimes the things that are most important to them don't have much of a place in their day-to-day schedule.
You're listening to Life Kit. I'm Marielle Segarra. And this is Naro Feliciano. She's a licensed clinical social worker and psychotherapist. And she says, Yeah, life has become all consuming.
We don't get much cognitive rest anymore, where we don't have to think about things, part of that Is the extent to which our life has become digital and people have access to us all the time. It's this constant access, constant communication, very little time for your brain to rest, which then you feel in your spirit unsettled. And that has become a norm in our culture now.
Yeah, I would almost take it as a given that most people are doing too much, right?
What signs show that my schedule is out of sync with my values?
Like scrolling too much, shopping too much, driving their kids to too many extracurriculars, working too much. But let's say someone isn't sure if their life is too much. How might they know? What are the signs?
So do you feel engaged in your life? Are you tired? Are you depleted? Do you feel resentful? Yeah. But the other thing is, does your life feel meaningful? Does it feel fulfilled? Do you feel joy at different times in your life? Do you have a sense of peace in your life? And those things seem more elusive and are becoming harder to access for people given the progression of where our culture has gone.
Narrow has thought about this problem a lot. It comes up with her clients, and she's also written a couple books on the topic, including This Book Won't Make You Happy: Eight Keys to Finding True Contentment. On this episode of Life Kit, we talk about it. Specifically, how you can start to account for your time, to figure out what you want to add to your life and what you want to cut out, and also how to compromise with the other people in your life, because too much is not necessarily the same for everyone. Your partner, for instance, might like being busier than you do, or your kid might want more downtime. And by the way, what you think is too much may have changed
too.
So
let me just give you one example. For me, for most of my life, especially being in school for quite a while. I would sleep four to six hours a night.
Wow.
And then I hit early perimenopause and my body no longer could function as a normal human being with four to six hours a night. So I had to decide to do less. I said, if I need to sleep seven to eight hours a night, I have to take on less. I need to do less. The other factor is I have four children. So more of my time is going to go towards parenting. You could have two children, but you have children with very different needs, children who need more time. So that person may say, I'm going to do less because I need more time for these other aspects of my life. It's dependent on what brings you fulfillment. For some person, work may be all in. That's where they get all their fulfillment. So they want to do more in that area.
But for others, work may be depleting. So for their mental health and their physical health, they're going to have to scale back where someone else may not.
For folks who do feel like they're doing too much in their lives, or just like they're not doing the right things. How can they start to account for their time and how they're spending it?
So there was a point in my life in practice where I was doing a lot.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
Why do so many people feel they don’t have enough time?
0:00–1:49
2
What signs show that my schedule is out of sync with my values?
1:49–8:42
3
How can I start a time audit to see where my minutes really go?
8:42–18:35
4
What’s the best way to list my priorities and compare them to my daily schedule?
18:35–21:56
Speakers
4 identifiedMore from Life Kit
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