It’s ubiquitous and it’s stressful. It seizes you and drains you. It leaves you longing for the good old college days, where responsibility was minimal and adult expectations hadn’t set in. We’re talking about time strain. Time, like money, is a finite resource. We only have so much of it, and what we do with it is totally up to us. Even when we think we’re enslaved to it, we’ve still made choices to absolve ourselves of it.

What to do? The crisis of not enough time is one that needs careful attention. As a psychotherapist, I help people take their time back, and uncover the things that keep them enslaved to time and their busy lives.

Too many things, too little time

As Americans, we’ve gotten so much busier. No longer is the 40-hour workweek the standard. It’s more like 45, 55, and 70 hour workweeks for some. It’s become more difficult for many to make ends meet without two people earning a living, trying to provide childcare, and find time for themselves.

In some ways, the recession has allowed us to take a hard look at how we invest ourselves, our time and our money. Many Americans are choosing to spend less time working, and more time investing in the things they value, like their kids, family, travel, etc.

Let’s talk about six things you can do plug the time drain in your life, and to start to reel your schedule back in:

1. Identify what you really value: are your activities and actions aligning with the things you value in life? If not, it may be time to make an action plan to get those things to align (activities/behaviors and values). If you’re unhappy at work, is it reasonable to work less, or to look for something else entirely? What are the blocks to get your values to line up with your activities/behaviors?
2. 

   Booked Solid?

   Get time-organized: this one is a no brainer. If you’re seeping time, and don’t know where it’s going, maybe you can make yourself more accountable. Here’s some tools to help: designer David Seah produces these fine organization tools, where you can start to hold yourself accountable on a daily/weekly/monthly basis. Teux Deux is a sleek, no frills online to-do list. And Google had plenty of products, from online apps, a calendar, and other tools to get you organized. Also, TSheets tracks your time online, like expenditures, so you know how and when your time is being used. And you’ll be surprised how much time you’ve spent on YouTube once you start.

3. Read the previous post on saying “no” to commitments to others, and learn to have more free time and not feel guilty doing it.
4. Prioritize and carve out time for yourself, even if it’s only five or ten minutes a day to do some sitting meditation. Without time for yourself, you’re less likely to be effective to all the other demands of your day. You’re teaching yourself to be able to “input” as well as “output” to others, which is hard for many guys to do.
5. Ask for help! If you can’t handle everything, don’t be so proud that you don’t ask for help. No one cares, except you. Enlist others to help where you need it, and don’t be shy. People are more than happy to help, as long as you don’t take advantage of them.
6. And, make good time for sleep. Sleep is the great equalizer when you get it, and will undermine everything else if you don’t. Get your 6-8 hours of sleep a night (some people need more than others). When you prioritize sleep, as well as yourself (see tip 4), you’re creating a very effective foundation to be your most effective at juggling the myriad things/people/situations that will absorb your time, including work. Do this one above others. Get some good nightly sleep.

Follow these steps, and you’ll be able to experience more feelings of “centeredness” and less feelings of being scattered. You’ll be able to take back your life and time, rather than continue to feel like you’re catching up to it. Good luck, and let me know how it goes. E-mail me directly on the “Contact” page above.

Know somebody who’s just chronically disorganized, or can’t seem to juggle a schedule for the life of them? Not having enough time, or being chronically at the mercy of one’s schedule, makes for a pressurized life, not to mention all of that stress that keeps accruing and those relationships that wear thin.

I notice sometimes that people who are chronically managing their schedule (sometimes) tend to use their busy schedule as a way to avoid the other, deeper problems going on with them. You know how we tend to use others as excuses for the problems we encounter? We can just as surely use our schedules or our “busy lives” as an avoidance technique, a convenient way to avoid having to deal with the bigger issues, such as unhappiness, a bad marriage, a job we hate or, worst of all, negative feelings about ourselves.

Bad time management is a function of this. We incorporate so much into our lives, that it seems as if we are chained to our hectic lives and schedules. We get to a point where they control us, not the other way around. We learn to gradually neglect ourselves, and our needs, so that our schedules (and others) get our time and attention. But guess what? Those people and appointments never get the best of us; we are only giving them so much of us, because we’re not taking the time to take care of ourselves, or don’t know how to, or both. The latter problem is more difficult to deal with than the former, but are so mutally related to each other that people often experience both problems together.

When we neglect our values, we neglect what is truly important to us. With the limited time we have as a human being, on this Earth, we tend to get so caught up in the minutia of everyday life – the ads, the errands, the deadlines – that we forget to check in with the things and people that matter most to us. They get sidelined because “life” is happening, or the busy prison cells we call our schedules. We forget to check in with ourselves, and savor that which is most important to us, which is often people and relationships with others and with ourselves.

Creating more space in our lives is important to incorporate more quality time to do the things we really want to do, or need to do, to maintain what’s really necessary. If you’re not living a life aligned with your values, or if you don’t know what your values even are, it’s time to sit down and hammer out how to find them. They are what can guide of lives, create joy and meaning, and lessen stress and anger considerably.