There’s no doubt that time is a precious resource.
But when I was younger, I couldn’t quite appreciate the value of time – it’s only in recent years that I started experiencing for myself just how valuable time is.
As a kid, time was never a worry.
Even if I spent an hour on commute and hours more hanging out with friends, there was always time left in the day to do whatever I wanted like play videogames or watch TV.
This is a luxury that I think many people would agree is hard to have after growing up and getting a regular job.
After a 2-way commute and a full day of work, there’s not much time left in the day or energy left in the tank to do many other things.
Extrapolating this to a full week, there isn’t much time to do things even on weekends.
Between running errands, completing chores, and spending time with loved ones, a good chunk of the 2-day break is gone before I know it.
Sometimes, 24 hours a day just doesn’t seem enough.
I realised that if there are things I want to spend time doing, I need to make time for them.
If I choose to “wait until there’s time”, there’s a good chance that I’ll never come around to it.
In a way, I realised that there’s a need to be frugal with my time and choose how I want to spend it well because every hour I spend doing one thing is an hour I can’t spend doing something else.
So I try to be more intentional with the way I spend my time.
I spend most of my time with my loved ones because I value them.
During my commutes, I occasionally listen to podcasts instead of music to learn new things and stay productive.
During my long lunch breaks at work, I finish my lunch quickly and spend the rest of my time writing blog posts or reading up on selected topics to make the most of my time.
Of course, that’s not to say that I strive to be productive all the time, because that is tiring in its own right.
I do still idle away some time by scrolling through various apps or watching random videos.
In fact, I think it’s important to have pockets of idle time throughout the day to give our mind a break and let it relax.
It’s up to us to be aware of how much time we want to spend taking breaks before going back to doing something else.
Or maybe taking a break is the way we want to spend your time, perhaps because we’ve had a long day or week, and that’s perfectly fine.
The point is that time can’t be earned, saved, or recovered by anyone – once it passes, we can’t get it back, so we should try our best to spend it mindfully.
Personally, my goal is to be aware of how I’m spending my time and try to align it with the ways I want to spend my time as much as possible, because I think that will bring even more happiness and fulfillment in life.