Personal Development: The Struggle With Time
The struggle is real: twenty four hours sometimes feels like it’s hardly enough time to do anything at all. When we’re young, time seems endless, like an eternity. When I had summer break, I felt like it was the entire summer. Now I know it’s a measly 60 days and it comes and goes so quickly.
As an adult, I get anxious knowing how fast time passes. Sometimes I panic, thinking of all the things I still want to do and still haven’t done. I can’t even place the time when my thought patterns changed. It’s like one second I was young, strong, able to do anything it seemed and I never had these thoughts about getting older or not having enough time to do the things I wanted to do with my life. Now, I’m older, (maybe wiser), in pain, weaker, and now I worry about how much time I have left to do fun things and more importantly, how much time I have left on this planet with my kids.
Thinking more narrowly now, when you think that we have 24 hours in a day, and six to nine of those hours are used for sleeping, we really don’t have much time past our obligations. (I always underestimate how much time errands take, for example). When you finally get past all the things you need to do, when do you find time for yourself? Here I mean self-care, fun past times, hobbies and learning. I guess I also mean not learning for the sake of getting a better job (i.e you’re going to college so you can get your dream job, although that’s still personal/professional development). On that note, professional development is still personal development. Even though you are bettering your skills for your job, it’s still also increasing your own skills that you can use for yourself or for another job.
I previously wrote about professional development in terms of goals. (For example, one of my goals this year is to do more professional development). That statement seems rather vague, doesn’t it? I leave it open so that I can interpret it how I want, when I want.
I have a schedule that I’ve developed that works for me. My first job is to be a stay-at-home-mom of three children, but I’ve developed my own at-home online business and I could easily devote ten hours a day to my business. Does that ever happen? Rarely, but it has been done! Usually, I work between five and nine hours on my business. Keep in mind, because I work for myself and I don’t have employees, my attention is devoted to money-making activities as well as the small tasks that could be outsourced in time. These are the things that seem to take up the most time.
So when, after a long and busy day full of work and meetings, kids and bed times do we have time for personal development? For me, personal development could be reading a book on how to run my business more efficiently, it could be a spiritual book, or it could be a YouTube video or podcast. Anything that I am interested in learning is fair game. I want to learn for the sake of learning, but if it helps out my business game at the same time, then I’m all for it.
Personally, I usually take some personal development time in small chucks: either in the morning, afternoon or evening. These times coincide with my kids sleeping schedule. In the morning, I wake up at 5:00am, and my kids sleep until 7:30am. Besides for planning and work, I try to catch a personal development 30-min time block at least once per week in this time slot. Around lunch time, my baby will go to sleep for his afternoon nap, so again, once a week, I try to fit that in. The same goes for the evening, but I find a lot of the time, I’m too mentally, emotionally or physically tired by the end of the day to do any high-end learning.
In order to remember what I’ve learned, I usually record the information in my commonplace book. I have a dedicated spot where I write all my notes on personal development. It doesn't matter what the topic is - I don’t really keep it that organized. It’s simply a spot that I can go to at a later time to find inspiration and ideas for further business brainstorming.
I know that everyone has their own life and that yours may look much different than mine - that’s ok. Try to find 15 - 30 minute chunks of time and read/listen/watch for a few moments so you can spend some time on your own personal development. Make a goal of three times per week (without a time limit). That way, you won’t feel guilty if you’ve spent 45 minutes or 3 hours on personal development each week. Trust me, a little at a time adds up, and before you know it, you may have developed a new skill or new knowledge that you can use in other areas of your life. You could even use something you’ve learned as a conversation starter when you meet new people!
Cheers to you on your own personal development. Let’s better ourselves and increase our knowledge while we’re here!
❤️ Sandra
