In the last few blogs, I have discussed the importance of letting go of what no longer serves us to create space for what does. I have also discussed the importance of defining your core values and aligning with them. In this article I am going to discuss why it is important to structure your life.
You see, you only have 24 hours in the day and, if you do not plan out those 24 hours, you will end up wasting most of your time. Let’s break this down in more detail. Out of those 24 hours, you will probably spend at around 7 hours sleeping. On the weekdays, you will then spend another 8 hours working. I would normally add one more hour for commuting, but most people are working from home because of the pandemic, so let’s give you the benefit of the doubt.
Out of 24 hours, you now have only 9 hours left in your day. Let’s take away 3 hours for running errands, such as dropping and picking up your children from school and activities, doing groceries, going to the bank, picking up the dry cleaning and making dinner, to name a few. Let’s give an hour and a half for all of your meals including your breakfast, lunch and dinner and half an hour of relaxation, which is being conservative, as most people spend more time relaxing in a typical day.
You are now left with 4 hours that you have to devote to what truly matters, which is life enhancement. And what is life enhancement, you may ask? What I mean by this is cultivating the 7 major areas of anybody’s life including yours. These are:
1) Personal and intellectual development.
2) Career and life calling or mission.
3) Health and fitness.
4) Relationships and social network.
5) Spiritual and emotional development.
6) Financial stability and freedom.
7) Contribution to society and those who are less fortunate.
These are the areas of our lives, which we must give attention to in order to live happy, productive and fulfilling lives. Now, the amount of focus that we give any one area, will vary from individual to individual. For example, one person may have wonderful health but her relationships suffer because he does not give them attention. Another person may have financial abundance and be wealthy but he suffers from one or more chronic diseases due to neglect.
We all need to scrutinize these 7 areas of our lives to determine where we need to focus the 4 hours of time we have left in our day. In the next article I will start to dive deeper into how to structure our free time in order to address all 7 areas of our lives. In the meantime, it is important to do the following exercise.
On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being the worst situation and 10 being the best situation, I want you to look at all 7 areas of your life and, honestly, rate yourself. Your rating of each category will give you a clue as to where you will need to focus on, in those 4 hours of free time that you have been gifted by the universe. Do this exercise to gain insights, which have the potential to dramatically impact your life.
Dr. Nauman Naeem