Cover Photo by Tristan Gassert on Unsplash
Being Aware — In Anything — Makes All the Difference
Last night I saw one of my brothers for the first time in 6 months. It was really nice catching up with him.
In our family, we’ve always grown up playing video games, so it didn’t take too long before we started talking about the Nintendo Switch, which we both own.
What’s nice about the Switch is that he can play on his big screen TV and I can play in handheld mode, and we get the “same” experience. So even when I travel, I still manage to catch up on my video game time.
He’s had the Switch for about two months and he’s played 50 hours of Mario Odyssey, 135 hours of Mario Kart and 20 hours of Zelda.
He’s got a full-time job, his girlfriend, his nephews next door and he also draws frequently, so it’s not like he’s not doing anything else.
If we do the math, that’s 205 hours of gameplay time in, let’s say, 8 weeks. That’s a little more than 25 hours per week.
If that sounds a lot to you, maybe it would be an interesting exercise to also analyze how you spend your free time.
Analyze Your Free Time
I frequently post my detailed and crazy schedule on Medium. I know exactly how I’m spending my time every day. You don’t have to be that structured though when analyzing your free time.
Playing video games is easy since most platforms log the time you spend.
If you watch TV shows on Netflix, it’s simple math to add on all the episodes you’ve watched times the duration of the show.
We all know the duration of each movie, so it’s easy to add those up as well.
Sports and other physical activities are usually easy enough to calculate.
Make sure to count the commute time as free time. This can be one of the biggest time sink. By having close to no commute time, you get more time to spend on things you want to do, not things you have to do.
But Why Analyze It?
A lot of people are “busy”. They are stressed by time and refuse to do things because they are busy. Yet when you analyze how they spend their time, they could definitely spare some of their free time doing other things.
I’m obsessed with time. We all have limited time before we’re gone.
I’ve lived that yet again yesterday when I went to the veterinarian with my mother and she told her that would likely have to resort to euthanasia very soon if she doesn’t want her cat to suffer.
Life is short. We all have to go at one point.
I personally like to know I’ve spent my time here doing the best I could.
I very much enjoy learning, so I spend a lot of my free time learning new skills.
Tomorrow I’m seeing my grandparents. They’re old. I’m putting myself in their shoes and I want to think for myself at that point that I’ve got no regrets. At least on how I spent my time. I want to say that I’ve lived the best life I could.
And that starts with knowing how I spend my precious time.
Conclusion
We do have a lot of free time. We are not *that* busy.
When we analyze how we spend our time, we realize there are better ways to spend it.
Spend it the way you want to spend it. Don’t be a slave of your bad habits.
You can do this!
Thanks for reading! :)