You need to spend every minute of your day doing something productive—that’s what all the gurus say. Every hour you aren’t working toward your goals is “wasted” and time misspent.
That seems like a hell of a way to live—feeling guilty in every moment that isn’t “useful.”
This great quote from Henry Rollins hits the nail on the head:
Your time is yours to spend. Your reasons for wanting to improve how you feel, move, and perform are your own. It’s all “life time,” so spend it how you want.
Ask yourself: “How can I align what I need to do with what I want to do?”
That’s the question we’ll be addressing in this article. Let’s get into it.
Your Time is Yours Alone to Spend
It may not always seem that way with the daily grind of work and personal commitments, but it’s up to us to choose what we do with ourselves. Feeling burdened and compelled to do things is a slow poison and bound to affect us negatively over the long run.
We tend to compartmentalize our days. We have work time, family time, exercise time, leisure time, and all other kinds of fill-in-the-blank time, when really it’s all just one thing.
Your life. Your time. Your chance to live and be the way you want to be.
Too many people in the fitness world in particular try to dictate how you should be spending your time, and why you should be training, but really, if your training isn’t being driven by the motivations that are meaningful to you, you’re not very likely to stay on course.
Make Choices, Not Compromises
My sons are quite a bit older now, but when they were this little, we had to stay on a pretty tight schedule.
I have two children (twin boys who are currently 8 years old) and I’m lucky enough to be home most of the week with them.
When our children were babies, our days were very regimented, so much so that if you name me an hour in the day, I could tell you exactly what we did in that time. The steady routine could be draining but it’s a choice we made to provide structure and stability in our children’s lives. I fit all my other activities and responsibilities around this structure.
That structure, of course, changed as the years went by and we shifted things again. And it will do so again in later years.
It’s our choice and it’s what we want to do.
Others may make different choices in their personal and family lives, but I like to think everyone is trying to do the best they can with what they have.
We run into a problem, though, when our day-in, day-out responsibilities don’t match up with what we want from life. That’s when it’s possible to be resentful and resigned, and before you know you it, you’ll wake up to find yourself having done the same thing you didn’t want to do for the past 10 years.
So how do we keep that from happening?
How to Make Sure Your Responsibilities Reflect What You Want From Life
If you’re in a job you hate, a relationship that’s not working to its best potential, or you’re just unhappy with how your responsibilities seem to run your life instead of feeling like you’re in control, there’s a problem.
It’s more than a little difficult, when you’re in the thick of things, to see a way to make things better–especially when we’re talking about significant and crucial responsibilities–but there are steps you can take to regain control of your life, rather than letting your obligations lead you around.
Step 1 – Analyze How You’re Currently Spending Your Time
Carry a notebook with you for a couple of days and keep track of your activities. You may find something surprising.
Choose one or two days that are pretty typical for you. For those days, write down every single activity you engage in, and if possible, write down a time estimate for each one.
At the end of this step, you’ll have a long list of things you spend your time on during a typical day.
Even if you think you know how you’re spending your time, this exercise may help you see some surprising patterns or activities. Or, it will just reinforce what you already know. In any case, this frank listing of how you spend your time gives you a lot of information about how your life is running and can add clarity to issues that keep popping up again and again.
Step 2 – Identify What Sucks in Your Current Routine
Does sitting in traffic eat up a lot of your time? Maybe there’s a different way to get to work, or maybe you could telecommute a couple times a week…
Once you’ve made a list of ways you’re spending your time, you should examine your list and pick out the things that:
- …you hate
- …take up a lot of your time
- …you’re not very good at
- …don’t enhance your life
- …or all of the above
Of course, some of the tasks you identify will not be avoidable. For instance, most people hate washing dishes, but it has to be done.
Some of the tasks, though, may be things you can either get rid of completely or approach in a different way. For now, just identify those things that fit one or all of the criterion above. You may be surprised and you’ll certainly have some things to think about.
Step 3 – Make Your Life as Full of “Hell Yes!” as Possible
You should feel confident in your day-to-day decisions.
“Hell yes!” or “No.”
This is a brutally simple decision tree that we use to work on our choices here at GMB. There are always going to be so many different things pulling at you and so many decisions to make if you let them all build up.
At its core, this simply means that we should spend most of our time doing things we love.
Every day, we’re presented with possible compromises, and often we ask ourselves, “What can it hurt?” But all these decisions that go against what we want from life are just ways to dilute our energy and purpose.
That’s like bleeding to death from 1,000 paper cuts.
So instead of draining your energy on things that don’t jive with who you are and what matters the most to you, ask yourself,
Is this a “Hell Yes!” or a “No”?
It’s a starkly simple question and the answer helps you to start living your life in the “Hell Yes” zone as much as possible, reaping the rewards as you go.
You Need a Capable Body to Live Life to the Fullest
It’s very common for people to feel their lives are run by their responsibilities, that their time is not their own.
In this post, we’ve explored the idea that the way you structure your time, the things you prioritize, and the responsibilities you have–these are all a series of choices that you have more control over than you think.
One thing that will make it easier to fill your life with more “Hell Yes!” choices is having a capable body that doesn’t hold you back.
Our Elements course won’t take up much of your time, but it will give you the physical foundation and freedom to pursue whatever you want from life. This is your life. Don’t let it pass you by.
A Capable Body = More “Hell Yes!” Choices
With Elements, you’ll build the physical autonomy and freedom you need to make spend your time on the what matters most to you.
Hi, I'm Jarlo Ilano, MPT đź‘‹
Jarlo Ilano has been a Physical Therapist (MPT) since 1998 and was board certified Orthopedic Clinical Specialist (OCS) with the American Board of Physical Therapy Specialties from 2011 to 2021. He’s undergone extensive postgraduate training in neck and back rehabilitation with an emphasis in manual therapy along with being certified as a Therapeutic Pain Specialist by EIM/Purdue University.
In addition to cofounding GMB, Jarlo has been teaching martial arts for over 20 years, with a primary focus on Filipino Martial Arts. He works out in jeans and flip-flops.
