What do you wish you could do more every day?
This question is a valid one, yet it is also a bit of a trap. Because if you wish you could do something more, then you might find yourself asking, why don’t you make time to? And sometimes it is that simple – to realize you can, and then to do exactly that. Other times, though, it is much harder to do that due to various things outside our control.
We ought to think about that though, whether we’re holding ourselves back from enjoying our lives more by following the status quo. I think it’s an easy thing to do, to just get so entrenched in our lives that we forget we have agency to change things. Or to be so used to doing something a certain way that it doesn’t even occur to us to do something different.
Sometimes, though, we do think of doing things differently, but we get so caught up with the wishing that we don’t actually do it. Ever think to yourself, “I should make more time for my friends/hobbies/etc.” and then promptly forget about it the next moment and everything continues on as before? It’s an easy trap to fall into, because actuating something – coming up with a plan and changing habits or schedules, etc., and actually doing the thing – is difficult.
For myself, I’ve realized that it’s really important to me to have the highest quality of life that I can, and to that end, there are two things (among others) that highly influence that.
One is improving sub-optimal things wherever I can, and another is pursuing activities and other things that I enjoy.
Given that I’ve already enhanced a number of sub-optimal instances (which I’ll talk about in another post), lately I’ve been focusing more on pursuing hobbies, including blogging, writing my book series, doing art, playing games, exercising, and trying new things.
Of course, I wish I had more time to do all these things. Most of the time I pick one or two to do on the weekend, and if I’m lucky I might get a couple hours during some weeknights. Even the weekends are limited though, as I also go to the gym and have to get groceries and do laundry and all that, and Monday usually rolls around before I’ve spent even a fraction of the time I wanted on one or more of my various hobbies.
I have found, though, that one trick is to take a short, 10- to 30-minute break from work to spend time on a hobby. It can be quite refreshing, as long as I don’t get too pulled in and end up spending more time than intended (though I’ve gotten better with this over time).
It’s something I’ve been trying to incorporate into my workday but I will admit that on really busy days or when I’m really focused on something I tend to neglect taking breaks (and taking breaks, according to research, is more conducive to productivity). It’s a work in progress, though, taken one step at a time.
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