I graduated this past December – like graduated, graduated. What a seriously crazy concept. All of a sudden having complete say over my time, though – without any prior commitments, that is – I find myself terrified that I’m not making the most of each day and week.
My time hasn’t entirely been my own these last 21 years of life given that so much of it has been devoted to things I’ve had to do to get somewhere else. I’ve never questioned all the school work or extracurriculars I’ve had – I’ve simply done them. But now, I’m technically done with most all my “obligations” per se. I’ve done what I need to, to ensure I can go into a career, if I so choose.
As liberating as this newfound freedom to do as I please is, it’s equally as intimidating. And something I’ve been grappling with since it’s been all but dropped into my lap. My inspiration for writing about this topic stems from the incredible blog called “Your Life In Weeks” from Wait But Why. I’m a huge fan of Tim Urban’s blog in general, but particularly love the way he lays out all the week’s we have available to us and the importance of making the most of each. There’s some entertaining and also scarily intimidating diagrams in there, if any procrastinators out there need a fire lit under their butt.
Essentially, over the course of each week, Urban maintains that it’s important to either spend your time enjoying yourself or working toward building something for yourself or others to enjoy now or in the future.
In the spirit of exactly that, I thought I’d list some things you can do every week that fall into each of those categories:
Firstly – enjoying yourself.
Enjoying yourself can take many different forms and, of course, will differ greatly depending on each person and what they enjoy – but nevertheless, here are a few ideas.
Read a book! Seriously there’s so many books to choose from, just start somewhere and figure out what you like – sci-fi, poetry, romance, classics or maybe even self-help books. It doesn’t have to be super philosophical or educational either. For example, I recently soared through Twilight (which I could and would argue is both anyways.)
Listen to a podcast! The same thing goes for this one in terms of variety. If you like listening about murder in a non-alarming or creepy way, I highly recommend the podcast My Favorite Murder.
Watch a show! Whether you’re looking for a laugh, something historical or a means to stay on the edge of your seat, there’s so many out there to choose from. I highly recommend New Girl, if you haven’t seen it. (Or if you have.)
Watch a movie! Get through all the classics, new ones and everything in between.
Spend time with friends and family! I know this one can look pretty bleak or strange nowadays depending on who you live with and are safely able to see, but taking time out to see loved ones or even just calling them can make such a difference in your mood and mental health.
For this point, I would also like to direct your attention to Urban’s blog “The Tail End.” It’s incredibly sad but in a really meaningful and important way – seriously, go read it.
Go outside! Whether it’s sitting outside, watching the sunset or going for a walk or hike (take your pup if you can, because spending time with you is their favorite thing), being outside and appreciating the beauty of the world adds so much to each day.
Make something! No matter what you’re good at or love, just make something. Whether it’s photography, writing, drawing, painting, music, videography or cooking/baking – do it. Creating things for other people will brighten their day and as a result yours, too.
Learn a new language! This one is new for me as I’ve just started, but I highly recommend using DuoLingo if you want to learn a language. It makes the process way less daunting than it seems, and the app is so entertaining and honestly fun to use.
Now for the second category of building something for yourself and/or others to enjoy either now or in the future.
This one, for me, takes the form of work.
Whether you’re trying to get ahead in a career you’re passionate about, searching for the career you love, taking time off from one to reevaluate what you want or just plain old saving money for whatever comes your way in the future, continue striving for the life you want.
For me, it’s this blog, seasonal work and seasonal writing. While seasonal work and the travel writing I want to do for this blog have taken a bit of a back seat due to the pandemic, some things I can do while I’m waiting for travel to pick up again are write blogs and save up as much as I can for when it does.
There’s always something to be done to progress yourself to your next chapter, even if it takes a different form than you originally imagined. And no matter what job you have, remember that so long as you enjoy it, you’re doing more than enough right.
Something of note I had to learn the hard way is that working as much as you possibly can in order to save money isn’t a viable option. Just because I could (and have been) working two full time jobs from 5:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day to save up as much as I can for the life I want, doesn’t mean I should have been.
While it meant I’ve been spending a lot of – or more like all – my time, building something for myself to enjoy now and in the future, it also caused the enjoyment aspect of my life to wane severely. It resulted in me being burnt out, tired and spending any extra time I did have sleeping.
Having a work-life balance is so important and hard to navigate especially when you’ve been used to burning yourself out on school and work for as long as you can remember.
Other things less career/job oriented that you can use to build something for yourself or other people to enjoy are projects. What are you good at? What do you love doing that you think other people could enjoy and/or benefit from? Even if you don’t want to put things on the internet, you can create things for other people, and even if you don’t think you have anything artistic to offer, you can always volunteer your time to any service or charity you’re passionate about.
No matter what route you take with this second aspect of making the most of your time, it essentially comes down to doing things to progress yourself and others.
Progressing yourself also extends to things like taking care of your mental, physical and spiritual health as well as making yourself a more well-rounded person by studying new subjects, learning new skills and immersing yourself in the world around you.
I know not everything is this black and white and that it’s a lot of work despite fitting on a few pages of a Google Doc. On the bright side, though, for the days you’re feeling bored, have a ton of spare time or simply don’t know what you do with yourself, you now have plenty of places to start. 🙂
Sierra Sage 