One way to feel greater meaning in your life is to consider what your priorities are, and where you want to spend your time and effort.
The first question you should ask yourself is: What parts of your life to do you want to focus on and grow at this time?
The second big question is: Is the way you are spending time aligned with your wishes and priorities?
The third question is: What future are you building? What seeds are you sowing and what will you reap in 5 or ten years from today’s efforts? Are you moving in the direction of your dreams? (These questions I learned from my mentor: Caroline “Alex” Robboy at the Center for Growth.)
There’s an easy way to assess the first and second questions. It involves creating two homemade pie charts. One for the way you wish you spent your time. One for the way you actually spend your time.
- First, write down in a list the parts of your life you care most about (for example: family, friends, career, travel, culinary adventure), then write down things you have to do or are very likely to do (for example: work, sleep, chores, gym time, goofing off with your phone, watching tv).
- How many hours a week would you ideally like to spend on each of these categories? Write the ideal number of hours you would like to spend on each of these parts of your life next to each category.
- Copy your list of the parts of your life a second time. Then either formally track your time for a week, or guess approximately how many hours a week you actually spend in each category.
- Then you do some math. (Here’s a quick model to make it easy). Start with how you actually use your time. For example, there are 168 hours in a week (7X24). If you typically sleep 7 hours a night, that means 7 hours of sleep nightly multiplied by 7 nights a week (7×7)=49 hours a week of sleep. 49 hours a week of sleep divided by 168 hours in a week (49/168)=0.29 or 29% of your week spent sleeping. You can do this for every category. Tip: 25% (or a quarter of your week) is the pie divided in four slices. You can then hand draw your Actual Time Used pie chart, making the slices approximately bigger or smaller than 25%. (Do this process again to build a Desired Time Use pie chart.)
Compare your Actual Time Used pie chart with your Desired Time Use pie chart. Are there any differences? Any places you could cut back? (Less YouTube time, perhaps?) Any places you should increase your time spent? You might be doing the best you can with a lot of different constraints and obligations. However, might you be over-committed? Is every volunteer activity absolutely necessary? Can you reduce any of your commitments. Can you set aside a goal and pick it up again in six months? (In my case, I try to limit the number of therapy-related activities to one or less per weekend.)
This sort of approach is often used in business literature, but I think it clearly applies to exploring our personal values and priorities as well, and making sense of our life in the broadest sense, and maybe changing how we define success. We’re all constantly moving through both time and space, but I believe we get the most satisfaction when we’re using our time with intent and consideration for our authentic self (the person you allow yourself to be when you do what you love or spend time with people who bring you joy.) Whether you get joy from quiet time alone, or from busy time with friends, give yourself the gift of joy.