I’ve written quite a bit about creating good habits and using time well. It’s a focus of mine because I find my work day gets absorbed in a whirlwind of busyness and interruptions, and I get home after a long day, exhausted. So using time well matters, and there is always room for improvement.
But time has limits. Time is limited.
These are a few things I’d like to do if I had the time:
- Podcast – I really enjoy listening to podcasts, and I also enjoy making them. But my last one was almost 4 years ago, and I find editing them time consuming and they are a lot of work for one person.
- School visits – I would love to travel to innovate schools and learn about them.
- Connecting- I’d love to spend more time with friends.
- Video editing – I have a personal video project I’m doing for students at my school and a fun video project I’m doing with my uncle and they both require a fair bit of editing time.
- Writing – I have 3 book ideas, but it’s hard for me to get sustained writing time. I’ve considered stopping my Daily-Ink and using this time to write other things, but I don’t consistently spend a lot of time writing these and it’s harder to continue an idea for short bursts daily than to pick daily short topics.
- Traveling – it’s a big world and I’ve seen very little of it.
I could go on but I think I’ve made my point. It doesn’t matter how efficient I get, I will still wish I had more time to do the things I’m passionate about, the things I’m interested in doing… if only I had the time.
The trick isn’t to try to get everything I want to do done. The trick is to create opportunities to do some of these things, and to commit to them fully and in a way that I enjoy doing them without beating myself up for not doing all of them. It’s about not wasting time being inefficient or lazy, but also not running myself ragged and feeling like I’m rushing through time, not getting enough done.
Yes time is limited. And so it is to be enjoyed and not spent worried about what isn’t done, or what still needs to get done. Time is not just limited, it’s also precious.