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    Stop Trying to Find Time

    Photo of Erik Reagan

    by Erik Reagan

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    Time isn't something you can find. Yet, we often convince ourselves that we can't do certain things because we can't "find" the time. Have you ever said this to yourself or someone else?

    “I want to read more often, but just haven’t found the time for it yet.”

    “I’ve been mean­ing to knock out that home project, but just haven’t found the time for it yet.”

    “We’ve talked about going on a vaca­tion, but just haven’t found the time for it yet.”

    Have you ever said any of these? Or some­thing sim­i­lar? Have you ever thought about some­thing you want to do and lazi­ly decid­ed you would do it if you could ​“find the time?”

    I have. I do.

    But this is a type of lie we tell ourselves.

    Time is easy to find. It’s now. It’s tomor­row. It’s next week. It’s easy to find the time. It’s not hid­ing from you.

    What’s more dif­fi­cult is inten­tion­al­ly decid­ing how to spend the time.

    Think about your time as a bank account. It’s yours to spend. And guess what! It expires and can’t be saved up. So you bet­ter spend it on stuff you actu­al­ly want to spend it on. Bud­get your time like you bud­get your mon­ey. (Assum­ing you bud­get your mon­ey, that is.)

    It seems many of us think about our time as some­thing we don’t have an influ­ence on. But that’s back­wards. Most things that we do, we choose to do. We choose to use our time in var­i­ous ways. Work­ing. Talk­ing. Read­ing. Watch­ing. Exer­cis­ing. Etc. We’re choos­ing to spend our time on these things.

    No Time

    Have you ever gone even fur­ther than the ​“find­ing time” men­tal­i­ty? This is where you sim­ply say you ​“don’t have time” for something.

    Anoth­er lie.

    Here’s a fun chal­lenge. I wish I could remem­ber where I heard it first. Try to shift the men­tal­i­ty of ​“I don’t have time” into ​“that’s not a pri­or­i­ty for me.” Let’s see a few examples:

    “I want to read more often, but I don’t have time” becomes ​“I want to read more often, but it’s not a priority.”

    How about this one:

    “We’ve talked about going on a vaca­tion, but it’s not a priority.”

    Ouch. That can be painful. It def­i­nite­ly helps put some of these things in perspective.

    So I have two chal­lenges for you today. First, think of a few things you’ve found your­self say­ing you haven’t ​“found time for” and decide if you should inten­tion­al­ly spend time on them. Sec­ond, swap out the ​“I don’t have time” phrase for ​“That’s not a pri­or­i­ty” and see if you have some changes to make.

    Opening Photo by Brad Neathery on Unsplash

    Photo of Erik Reagan

    Written by Erik Reagan