Time is a precious comodity ​”How are you using yours?”

Its Sunday and my body feels like it’s been thrown around a fucking washing machine on spin wash! I am seriously rethinking this skiing malarky, whilst I do enjoy it and let’s be fair it’s better than being at home doing nowt, it has been a compromise I have made for the past 5 years and needs some serious reconsideration on my part. Although I didn’t take me laptop, hence the absence on here but I did take a Christmas gift, a lovely note book that simply says “Little book of ideas” gifted to me by my youngest. I have been still doing a lot of reading, reflection, dictation to my phone (which is a great way of capturing ideas immediately) and writing, in fact I couldn’t wait to get home, back into me little room and start tapping away again at the keys – so here I am. 

One of the things that I did ponder a-lot about whilst away from the normal distractions from life was “Time” and how undervalued, underestimated and quite frankly it is taken for granted, so wanted to explore it more on here.

I’m 48 now and 49 this year and my initial desire back in June 2018, when I started committing to writing, was to have completed writing the book “Blood is thicker than Alcohol” by my 50th Birthday 29th May 2020. To be honest starting this blog hadn’t factored in any other the original plan but here I am 6 months in with this being my 100th post FUCK ME!

I have mentioned before that when I was struggling with university coming up to my 40th Birthday, I procrastinated a lot, in fact I even procrastinated about procrastinating, I came across a quote, don’t ask me where, or why but it resonated with me so much I had it tattooed on me foot as a gift to myself the quote says “Procrastination is the thief of time”. 

I did an Instagram post whilst away that said  ‘There are 24 hours in a day and 168 in a week, just over a quarter of that time is spent on sleep and thats if your getting 7hrs or more which over a week leaves 119 hours left. For me another 37+ of my hours are dedicated to work, leaving me 82 hours left a week to play around with. Not bad eh? But then lets break that down a little more. In those 82 hours I need to find time for my family, commitments or engagements, housework, preparation, planning, being there for others and some where in the middle of all this I need to find and make time for me. 

Before starting this journey, I would have never dreamed of getting up an hour earlier before work to spend some time on me, but now its a priority for those 7 hours a week leaving 75 for all of the above. 

Social media, this was one of my main observations whilst away, the amount of time I observed people spending on their phones, myself included I used to be a fucker with it, responding to messages, or chatting to mates, seeing what everyone’s been up to, my phone is the was the first thing I looked at when walking up, (cos the alarms on me phone) I could go online, Facebook for a quick snoop and before I know it I have been staring at the fucker for an hour! Then there’s the time spent in between the day, on the bus into work, or breaks, lunchtime, traveling home from work, getting in from work, having a cheeky glance whilst adverts are on or during a shit boring tv program Pat is making me watch. Christ I working in the addiction field and I have to confess I think I had and perhaps still have a little too much dependency on social media which is just another form of procrastination.

So back to the math 75 hrs left in the week, if I was honest with myself I would / could guesstimate that I perhaps spend 3 hrs a day on Social Media, 21 a week, that’s 54 hours left for the week and that is not a lot to fit in, because quite frankly distractions in life cost us time, and despite all the planning or preparation you can guarantee that you are going to use some of your specious time for something unexpectedly happening, out of your control or someone needing your time and attention, say a loved one who might be having a bad time, who may need a shoulder to cry on or just someone to listen, be there, be present, this uses up your precious time. 

So my new New Years Resolution is to use my hours and time more wisely, practicing to say NO to things I don’t want to do and say YES more to the thing’s that make me happy, content like writing and accomplishing my goal to produce a book.

I indend on dong this by replacing the time I would have spent on social media, doing more reading, writing, sat here tapping away in me room, spending more time #Havingawordwimesn opposed to wasting precious time seeing what some one had for dinner!

Time is a precious commodity, we are get one shot of this life, I dread to think on reflection just how many hours, years I wasted on a relationship, worrying or thinking about what other people think before I might have taken any action, or how much time I have spent procrastinating so before I go ask yourself this, out of all the free hours you have allocated for you

• How much time do you spend worrying about things, sometimes things that might never happen?
• How much time do you dedicate to a relationship? Are you giving too much or not enough perhaps?
• How much of your time you are dedicating or committing to doing something that you don’t really want to do? 
• How much time do you allocate for yourself just to take a step back and think about you?
• How many hours are you wasting on social media?

Reet I’m off, after a gawgus Sunday dinner prepared by or old man, I’m off for my weekly Sunday Siesta and after skiing and travelling for a week the couple of hours spent snoozing are definatly going to be worth it

Love Fordy x