I have been asking my clients to do a project lately, and I've decided I need to take my own medicine and do the project myself. I'm writing this because it is so profound that I think it might be a good project for all of us.
You see, I have people coming into my office who say their relationship is the most important thing and they don't want to lose it, but each week they insist that they had no time whatsoever to spend time together and develop a closer bond. When questioned, we find out that there was time for watching TV, playing video games, vacuuming, Facebooking, texting....you get my drift.
So I've been asking my clients to make a list of their top 5-10 priorities in life. These are the priorities that, looking back from your deathbed if you have nurtured and developed them, will lead you to say that you have had the life you wanted and have no regrets. The big things.
Then, after making this list, live a normal week and track your time as if you were a lawyer who needed to bill each minute of your time. Take a notebook around with you and just jot down what you are doing in general each day. Much of our time is spent sleeping, doing necessary things like getting ready for the day and doing errands. We all have to go to the grocery store, do laundry and fill up our cars with gas. But after all that, there will be a certain amount of "disposable" time. Time that we have some choice about how to spend.
Take all your disposable time for the week, and then divide it up on a pie chart to see how it's spent. Compare it to your priority list. Also, look at your journal and make sure all of the non-disposable time is really non-disposable.
Of course the downfall of this practice is that once you make your priority list, the tendency is to live your tracking week differently. You could track the week first, and then make the priority list, but then you might be tempted to alter your priorities to fit your time! The bottom line is that this is only for you: try to be honest, you don't have to show it to anyone!!
I've been struggling just to make my priority list. That, in itself, can be a good exercise. But I can already see where this is going. I already suspect that my top priority, connection and relationship with God, is way down the list in terms of time spent.
I'd love to hear about your adventures!!
