Get up. Start working. Thesis. Eat food. Get a few things done. Sleep. Rinse and repeat.
Sometimes it can feel like weeks, months or even years, fly by without feeling that a lot has happened.
As a Time Management Coach I help customers make many tasks in life automatically, so that they can achieve more in less time and with less effort. To optimize our efficiency and effectiveness, routine is a necessary part of our lives. The only problem is when you systematize so that you do not fully experience the joy and meaning in your life. You simply check things from the list.
But what if there can be some simple, accessible ways to delay the passage of time and to fully enter into your life? I am here to offer you good news: there are.
With these three simple tricks you can get the feeling that you experience your days instead of cutting through it.
Enjoy the little things
The simple, everyday moments of life can be incredibly satisfactory if you leave them. But so often we rush through an activity or multitasking so much that it just passes us.
Researchers encourage Mindful attention Where you notice what happens in well -known experiences to raise awareness among the joy they offer.
I have discovered that some small, deliberate choices can make a big difference in my life. A ritual that I have recorded when the weather is fun is to sit outside during lunch and eat without doing anything else in particular. This small break to just stop and the grass, the trees, the flowers, the birds and everything around me helps me to fully experience the beauty of the season.
Another choice I made is when I keep my daughter at night before bedtime to keep my phone with me. It is not very long – about 10 minutes – before I put her in her cradle for the night. Although time is short, I think it is the most of the moments that I stop and the gift of her precious life appreciates the most. She grows so fast and I don’t want to miss from enjoying my daughter because I do something else while I am with her or always try to continue to the next activity.
What about you? Is there an area where you can stop multitasking and enjoy the valuable moments around you?
Sprinkle in novelty
Another way to extend the feeling of time is to sprinkle in dashes of the external of the ordinary that break your routine. If you only do your habits, your brain will fit together the experiences from day to day. But if you do something distinctive, you experience the novelty effect Where your brain has a higher state of attention and stores experience as a separate and clear memory.
This could look like registering to attend larger events, such as going to a new work conference or taking a vacation to explore a different location. Or you can add novelty in much smaller ways during your weeks to help you feel that life does not pass in a haze.
On the professional side, small moments of novelty can resemble adding some network lunches or events where you make contact with new people and see new places. Whether it can look like learning a new skill that you have never tried before. Or it can look like setting up your computer in a new coworking room or coffee shop.
On the personal side you could attend a local festival instead of watching Netflix, viewing a new restaurant in the city instead of going to where you are stuck, or try a new training lesson instead of the one you have visited for years.
It is fine – and even good – to have routines and do standard things that you like. But taking your experience together can help you to delay your subjective time experience.
Is there a new experience that you could insert in your life this week?
Stop trying to keep up
At a time not long ago or far away there were no smartphones, no apps and no streaming services. And life was good, good.
Another way to delay the time is to remove the pressure that you could do something that you should do. Only because someone you follow, has posted something does not mean that you have to read it. The fact that a big world event is happening does not mean that you have to be an expert in it. Only because there was a new season of a show that you like does not mean that you have to view it now – or ever.
Most content made in the world is completely optional for you to read or consume. Releasing the need to switch on 24/7 can increase your sense of relaxed dramatically and as if you have more time.
In my personal life I have placed limits on the use of social media. I don’t even have accounts on some social media apps, and for those I am doing, I try to limit myself to a few times a week. If I get the itch to switch on more often, I try to pick up a book instead. It is a lot more satisfying to get through a relevant book then endlessly through a feed.
Do you press under pressure to keep track of the content where you have no real responsibility to enter into? If so, how can you reduce your standards to open more time and space to be used?
A lot of life is routine. That’s not a bad thing. But by trying out these strategies, you can delay your perception of time and experience deeper satisfaction in the moments.
#tips #satisfaction #routine