Yes, it has been a long while since I wrote a blog post, for mostly poor reasons. I do have a few legitimate excuses – new job, travelling, and other responsibilities – but those are not good excuses for not having written a post in more than 3 months.
So what exactly have I been doing? While that’s nobody’s business but my own, I thought it might be interesting to see what I’ve been doing lately. After all, we don’t usually get much insight into other people’s lives, for good or for worse.
So What Do I Do With My Time?
Near the end of September I got a new job. I don’t need much time to prepare for work, but let’s round up to an hour. It takes almost an hour to get to work, and then that much time to go back home again. The job itself is 7 hours per day, with an hour for lunch. All together that’s 11 hours a day.
I try to sleep around 11pm, but usually end up in bed around midnight. I get up anytime from 6:30am – 7am, so let’s average my sleep out to 7 hours, from 12am to 7am. Now I’ve used up 18 hours in a 24 hour day. Add the time for regular mundane things like dinner, cleaning up, and preparing for bed and I’m up to 20 hours out of 24 in a day.
So 4 hours per weekday a week to do things, plus weekends. So what do I do to fill the time? Here’s a short list of things, good and bad, that occupy my typical free hours:
- Playing computer games
- Teaching karate at community centres
- Practicing karate at a local dojo
- Reading
- Volunteering to teach at a local high school
- Volunteering to assess applicants at a local university
- Cleaning and other household and yard work
- Buying things and other errands
- Surfing the web (Youtube, etc.)
- Writing stories, poems, etc.
- Making plans and tracking life
- Going out with friends
- Life admin (bills, emails, phone calls, etc.)
Some of these things are common to everyone; some are not. A few of these things take up more of my time than many of the others. However, the point is the same. We all have lots of things to do, but you don’t hear about all of these things from people. They are so mundane, expected, and obvious that we neither ask about them nor are interested in hearing about them.
Time As a Factor in Success
I don’t know if this happens with other people, but I find that I worry about whether or not I’m using my time productively, even while I’m not. It’s not easy to write a book or train for a special athletic event when you’re busy living life, but most people have that special skill or activity that they do, regardless of their circumstances.
So the amount of time we have to invest in a task is important. We don’t get better at something unless we actually do that particular task over and over again. But as I’ve learned over the years, there are other factors involved as well. Namely, focus and energy.
If we have lots of time but very little energy and no focus, then nothing productive can get done; on the other hand, there seem to be very busy people who get lots of things done despite being so busy. There is a saying, “If you want something done, give it to a busy man.”
When I’m not writing about my journeys I might attempt to explain this saying and the relative importance of time, energy, and focus. But in the near future I’d like to get back to more regular blog posts about my long walking journeys, starting with a proper introduction to my adventure to Santiago de Compostela in the northwest of Spain.