Introduction
Many of us don’t realize just how important having fun is and neither do we try to find time for it. Contrary to what you may have heard, or been conditioned to believe, you NEED that recharge time that fun brings.
Why Fun/Recharge Time?
Have you ever used something that requires batteries? Something like a power drill to screw something in, or even a flashlight to illuminate your way? When you have a drill gun and it has a fully charged battery, then it gets the job done in a snap. Those screws go right in and it takes little effort on your part.
It is the same with a flashlight. When the batteries are full, it lights the way magnificently, illuminating your path. On the other hand, when the batteries are low then the result is much different. When you try to put a screw in with a low battery drill, it really struggles. It takes longer and you have to put more effort in on your side. When it’s very low, that drill won’t do the job at all, no matter how hard you try to make it. Likewise, the flashlight will give much less light on low battery. Making it harder for you to see and leaving you in darkness. The lower these tools’ batteries drop, the more difficult it is for them to carry out what they were meant to do. We are similar.
When we are deprived of fun, which recharges our batteries, then we will be running on a low battery as well. You may think that taking fun out of your schedule will make you more productive, but that simply means that you will always be running on low battery.
So yes, you may have more time, but you will be less effective, meaning in the end taking away fun is actually a detriment, not an advantage. We need those times to have fun, to recharge, if we want to be more effective in our other activities and tasks. When we take time to just have a bit of fun, not only will we do a better job, but it will also lift our energy. Many times, we find ourselves feeling down or caught up in negative thoughts and feelings. Fun is a way to release those stresses that weigh on us. Who doesn’t want to be more effective and feel more positive emotions?
Finding The Time
You may want to argue that there simply isn’t time enough for fun. You need to spend all of your time just to get essential activities completed. On top of what was discussed above, let’s go into one way to specifically find the time for fun. First, you need to be aware of what you are already doing. If you are a big planner, you will have this first step in the bag. If you are not, then I would suggest keeping track of all your activities for a week and how long you spend doing each. Once you are aware of how all of your time is being spent, you can move to the next step.
After you have become aware of what you are doing and how long you are doing those activities, then you can start looking out for busy work. Busy work is a thief of time. It steals time without giving you anything in return. Here’s a story to illustrate:
John was cleaning an apartment with his friend Zack. John was upstairs doing his part and once he was finished, he went to check on his friend. When he came downstairs he was surprise with Zack. The man was really moving, he had a lot of action and was all over the place. It appeared to John that Zack was really on top of things, but as he watched, his opinion began to change. John realized that his friend did have a lot of action, yes, but the actions were achieving nothing. Zack was picking things up and moving them, then picking them up again and moving them to another space. All he was actually doing, was shifting things around and nothing was actually getting clean, despite all of his movement.
The story above is similar to what we do quite often. We have many tasks that we do again and again and they in return do little to nothing for us. Action that produces little to no results, is busy work. We have been conditioned that if we are sitting still, we are failing, so we unconsciously fill our schedules with busy work. You can find those activities as you look at your plans over the course of a week and ask yourself a question. What came from this activity? If you can’t answer, or the answer is unfavorable, then that is busy work that you could then replace with fun.
For example: You could go running around to stores asking if you could leave business cards for your business there. This could be busy work, because you could have just called and found out which stores would let you leave them. That way, you don’t have to spend so much time running from store to store to see if you can leave the cards, instead you will know which ones beforehand and save a lot of time. So, take that run around time and add some fun into your schedule where it would have been. fun makes us happier and more effective, busy work simply keeps us moving.
If you really want to have not only more joy in your life, but to actually be more effective, then you need to plan the time for fun.
Challenge
Keep track of all your activities and how long you spend doing each, over the course of a week.
Eliminate busy work and replace it with fun, so that you can be more effort the rest of the time.