Spending Time

As you know I engaged on a life coaching course and one of the things we do is coach each other. I was saying to a fellow student that I can get very rigid about how I manage my time. I feel as if I am in a box with lots of compartments each allocated to some task or other. It mostly works until there are too many tasks and too few boxes, or the structure starts to feel a bit rigid. This is usually a sign that I have too much on and the whole structure is about to break. 
I was talking about how I spendtime and I was struck by the word spend. I then went onto consider savingtime and how we use the same language with regards to money. 

I don’t think I am alone in making judgements in how I use my time (or money for that matter). Am I wasting time if I sit and watch every episode of Gavin and Stacey? Should every moment be filled with purposeful activity and what counts as purposeful activity and who decides? Do I use 90 minutes of doing something that I can see a result from i.e. cutting the grass, as money in the bank for relaxing on the sofa or having an afternoon snooze? 

Whose voice is in your head wagging their finger and making judgements? 

The irony of all of this is that our time is finite and not just that, but our ability to choose how we spend our time may become limited or compromised. Ill health, mental decline, natural disasters or wars will all have an impact.
We all know our time is finite, we will have all lost friends and loved ones but somehow we slide away from the fact that one day your number will be called.

What are we saving time for?  

You cannot bank it and watch it accumulate interest, equally there are no brownie points in reading a book of philosophy rather than watching Family Guy. 
I have no answers, but I do think that it’s worth examining our thoughts about things we have to do and the time it takes. If we are constantly thinking about the next thing or ruminating about the past we are not in the moment. Past events are gone and we can learn from them and maybe behave differently if the situation comes around again. Any thoughts forward are about a future that hasn’t happened yet. So there is no point in worrying about it. 
If we truly are present in the moment we have the best opportunity to act/think/speak in a way that is good for us and everyone else around us. The other benefit is that time does seem to slow down, so you get more bang for your buck. 

You also have more of a chance of remembering what you did last Wednesday!