Unstructured Time
One Critical Element To Simplify
Think about it for a second… if a friend or parent called you and asked about meeting up in the next few days or even this weekend, what are the odds that you could make it? How much of every week is pre-planned? Even kids these days seem to be running around from soccer to a friend’s birthday, to dance class to a special tutoring class, all following a day at school. It just seems like we don’t even have time to relax and breathe.
Planning Unstructured Time?
10 or 20 years ago, kids used to spend hours outside, playing and running around with little to no equipment and no schedule to follow up on. Somehow, those kids still ended up doing well in life, despite not having optimized every single minute of every day. It helped those become creative, think outside the box, etc. In a similar way, I think most of us would agree that having time to clear our mind, to relax, to think about what we have, what we want, and other such questions can be very beneficial.
Is the only way to get there to actually plan “free” or “unstructured” time? To sign up for a yoga or meditation class that will allow more time to clear our mind? My wife and I have actually set each Friday evening to a “date night”. Sometimes we go see a movie, a show, but in most cases we don’t necessarily do anything special, we simply go take a walk, talk about the small and big things and enjoy our company. Is it ironic to “plan unstructured time”? I guess so. In a way, it would be even better if that time came up on its own but in our experience that has not been the case so we feel like it’s still much better to find free time than simply hope it comes around.
