Undoubtedly, there are things that you would like to be doing with your life but you feel that you simply don’t have the time. When you add up the time spent getting ready for work in the morning, the time spent at work, working from home, and commuting, your job can easily consume 12 hours each day, leaving you with about 12 hours. If you get the recommended 8 hours of sleep per night (yeah right), you’re down to 4 hours. Add another 2 hours per day for preparing meals, eating them, and cleaning up afterwards and you have 2 hours left. Add 45 minutes for exercise and travel to/from the gym and you are left with only 1 hour and 15 minutes to spend with your family, help your kids with homework, feed yourself intellectually, grow spiritually, and find some form of recreation.
So what can we do in order to find more time to do the important things?
Well… I’ve looked everywhere and you cannot “find time”. All you can do is decide what to do with it. If we look at how we spend our time, there doesn’t appear to be much we can cut out. Usually sleep and exercise are the first things we delete from our schedule, but when we do so, we undermine our ability to effectively use the time that we have.
The obvious area of opportunity here is that huge chunk of our day spent at work. But we have to work, or else we can’t support our families, right? Not so fast. I know there are situations where a single mom may be working two jobs simply to make ends meet and her time spent at work is truly an investment her children’s future, but I also know of plenty of professionals whose families have an abundance of material possessions; however, they are impoverished when it comes to the things of real worth.
I think we need to ask ourselves if our jobs actually support our families or if they support our ego. That’s a whole posting in itself, so I won’t go into it now.
What about the time spent working? You can’t just stop working… and if you cut back on the hours that you work, you may be perceived as a slacker or lazy. These days, that could lead to a serious reduction in your hours at work. What can we do? We can’t add more hours to the day and it seems that we can’t cut anything out.
I believe we need to change our thinking. Instead of compartmentalizing 12 hours per weekday for work and using the 1 hour and 15 minutes left over at the end of the day to feed ourselves intellectually, grow spiritually, find recreation, and grow as a family, what if we added those aspects to our work?
What does that look like? We need to ask ourselves if we are growing intellectually at work. If not, then we have reached a plateau that will lead to discontentment and we need to look for some opportunity to grow. Is your career in line with your spiritual beliefs? This doesn’t mean everyone has to join the ministry full time. We should; however, understand our spiritual gifts and apply them in manner that will give glory to the One who grants them. What about recreation – is it possible to find recreation at work? I think it is if our careers are based on our passions.
That’s what it really boils down to. If we take that large portion of our day that is spent at work and use that time engrossed in the things that we are passionate about, then we may just find that we come home fulfilled rather than frustrated and exhausted.
You see, I don’t think our problem is a lack of time. Our problem is that at the end of the day we feel that our day has been lacking in significance. That’s why we wish we could do all of these other things if we just had the time.
Find a way to add some significance to your workday and see if it doesn’t add to your job fulfillment. If you’re a boss, understand what makes your employees tick and incorporate that into their objectives. Show your children that you are passionate about what you do because you work towards the fulfillment of your mission daily.
