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How To Find Time For The Hobby You Love

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For some reason, our lives seem busier than ever these days. With work, running a household and family commitments, it can seem way more easy to slip into another Netflix box set than to pursue a hobby which requires some commitment and dedication. And yet having a passion in life is incredibly important for both our sense of personal fulfilment and our wellbeing. Whatever you want to do, be it learning to make clothes from patterns, painting in watercolour, going to bass guitar school, learning Spanish or even just finally writing that novel, you can make it a priority and find the time even when you feel busy enough to drop. You can’t make any more than 24 hours in a day, but you can use them better in order to do what you love…

Find Out Exactly Where You’re Wasting Time

All of us waste time in one way or another, but usually we don’t understand exactly how. Sometimes the hours just slip away and you can’t seem to pinpoint where. We all have time that we aren’t using well – it could be falling down a Pinterest rabbit hole, wasting time scrolling through social media or telling ourselves we’ll watch one more episode. Keeping a time log for a couple of weeks can really help you to see clearly when it comes to the areas we can claw back time to devote to the things we love.

Try Combining Your Hobby

Could it be possible to do two things at once when it comes to your hobby? For example, if you want to see your friends, could you combine that with taking a class together? If you are away travelling a lot with work, could you make your hobby portable enough that it could come with you? Or if your hobby is something involving arts and crafts, could you do it while you watch television as well? Combining more than one activity can work very well for some things, and let you pursue what you love without feeling like you’re trying to squeeze too many things out.

Change Your Scheduling

Often, instead of us being in charge of our schedules, they are in charge of us. We almost feel a compulsion to pack every minute with jobs, responsibilities and tasks, but ask yourself – does it really have to be that way? Is every item on your never ending to-do list really, strictly, necessary? We have the power to change things, simply by changing the way that we schedule. Focus on a maximum of five must do things in a prioritisation matrix on a single day rather than piling onto a continuous list. This creates a sense of momentum, which can actually spur us on to do more.

Put Your In Between Time To Work

There is bound to be at least a little awkward time in your day that is wasted – that train ride into work, an hour’s lunch break that you don’t really need – and you can use that time for your hobby. A commute could become a great opportunity to get in a chapter of your latest book club novel, or use a language teaching app to get in some practise. Instead of wasting this time, think creatively about how you could use it. Even if you can’t practise a hobby in your lunch break or a commute, ticking off a work task or doing the grocery shopping online so that you free up other time further down the line to use for your hobby.