Everyone wishes they had more time in the day. However, we’re also often bad at knowing how much time we waste. To find out if you’re really overwhelmed or just letting your days slip away, take the “five minutes more” experiment.
As personal finance blog Get Rich Slowly explains, when you get up from one task to start another, you’re making the decision to fill your time with whatever comes next. If your day is just one big series of never ending tasks, you can easily overwhelm yourself, even if all those tasks are optional or can be re-arranged. Instead, when you’re about to get up from one place, take five minutes to sit where you are instead. Not working, just sitting:
Small changes matter. I realized that, although I was making strides toward financial wealth, I was lacking richness in time. Gone was my debt, but so were my Sunday morning strolls and nursing a cup of espresso for hours. One of my mini experiments involved lingering five minutes more whenever I could. If I didn’t have a place I had to be, whenever I would get up to leave somewhere, I’d sit back down for five more minutes. The only rule I had was that I couldn’t pick up my cell phone in those five minutes. I had to simply be.
Chances are, in those five minutes you’ll quickly figure out how urgent everything you need to do is. Will sitting for five minutes mean you’re late for the second shift of your other job? Sure, you probably can’t spare that time. However, will sitting for five minutes mean the dishes don’t get done until five minutes later? Will it mean five fewer minutes of playing video games or watching Netflix? If that’s the situation you find yourself in, you might have more free time than you think.
Life after debt – experimenting with financial balance | Get Rich Slowly via Rockstar Finance
Photo by North Charleston.