Make Your Time Work

Working smarter, not harder. Exercise bike while
reading the homework I assigned for the next day.

If I had a dime for every time someone said to me, "I wish I could (fill in the blank), but I don't have the time," I could fund my current tuition with it. Most often the blank is the amount of reading I do. And usually the person saying this has things going on in his/her life that I wish I had more time for.

Everyone says "I don't have the time to..." about something at some point. The truth is, if it's important, you'll make the time. Our lives are easily filled with people, places, things (and that's a whole other conversation), so the only way anything fits in is if we place it there. Sounds impossible, doesn't it?

I've decided it's not always quite as impossible as we think. Going on a big trip to Israel this summer, I realized my husband and I needed to start exercising so we could handle the excessive walking the trip requires. But where the heck in my life of family, friendship, teacher, student, and church would I fit exercise?! But did I really have a choice?

There were some questions I had to ask myself. In my current season of life:
1. What do I HAVE to do?
2. What do I THINK I have to do?
3. What do I want to do?
4. What can I let go, cause I frankly don't care that much about it?

Everyone's answers will vary because it depends where you're at in life and your preferences. For example, spic 'n span cleaning of my house isn't even on my radar. If stuff is picked up and there's no obvious mold issue, we are good to go. However, I did notice two things in answering these questions that may apply more widely -  question #1 was a smaller list of items than I thought and question #2 was a larger list than it should be. And basically everything on lists #2&4, I can forget. Looking at my schedule, I placed the items from #1 and then fit around where I could items from #3. Yes, right now I do less of what I want than of what I have to, but I was able to fit in three hours of exercise every week!

And the big part to realize in all of this...if you still don't have time for something, then it's not as important to you as you thought right now. Life goes through seasons and things change. Don't give up on it, just put it aside for now. Quit stressing and keep your dimes!