Am I spending my time right?
I’m 33 and thankful for most things I’ve got. Yet I have this feeling that “what I do” isn’t “what I wish I did”. Join me in this self-reflection as I try to find out if this feeling is right or if I’m just a spoiled brat entering the mid-life crisis.
Note: I originally wrote this article a month ago, but never posted it because I felt it’s just something I struggle with. Since then, Casey Neistat postet a video and there is some talk on this topic on twitter — I guess there are others out there having the same issues so I decided to post it anyways.
Preface
Let me give you some context first:
I’m married, father of three, live in a nice flat in a beautifull swiss region and I have a fun and well paying job as a UX Designer. Sounds great, doesn’t it? I’m not complaining — life is going great right now.
But I’ve seen the other side, too. In my personal life, when I spent so much time and energy working my ass off that I was tumbling blindfolded towards a burnout. Or when I missed almost the entire first year of my first daughters life, because I didn’t know how to connect to a baby and didn’t bother to find out.
Or culturaly, as we where fortunate to meet a chinese woman who showed us around Beijing and allowed us a brief glance behind the curtain. In San Francisco we met a homeless IT specialist who lost his job, then his family and his home within mere 6 months. My father worked with Romas in Romania where the kids go to a school that doesn’t have paper nor pens to teach them how to write. I write this article on a Laptop that could feed 37 kids for a year, my phone is worth 10, and the clothes I wear to work could feed 5 kids.
My inner struggles
I’m thankful for what I have, it hasn’t allways been this way. I know I’m lucky to walk in my shoes and I enjoy it. The important things seems to be good right now: my health, my marraige, my family, my job…
At the same time, I ask myself with the voice of Jackie Chan: “What is it good for?”. Even though we try to live a simple life, we still have way more than we really need. Yet I sometimes work 10 hours or more. Which in itself is sort of amazing, as I’m not particularly good at networking and yet I’ve been provided with so many amazing job opportunities that I had to start turn some of them down. I’ve never had that before.
But then again “what is it good for (to work so hard, if the only thing I gain is more money or wealth) Absolutely nothing.”
Save my Soul
With this inner strife I decided I wanted to use my talents for more than just work. I knew about a NGO that I was told is looking for a photographer. Since this is something I love and I’m semi-decent at, I sent in my application. As they would only need me for a couple weeks throughout the year, this will fit nicely into my freelancer schedule. And it would finally allow me to do something helpful along side my job. The prospect of this humanitarian engagement settled my urging desire to change something up in my life.
That was a couple weeks ago.
This week I got their answer and you guessed it — they put me on the waiting list. I might get to attend the training next year if someone bails, but I don’t expect this to happen. So maybe in 2020. Or not. I don’t know. And then he was back:
A Canvas to the rescue!
As a UX Designer I use many different canvas’ in workshops to help clients sort their ideas. So, why not eat my own dogfood? That’s excatly what I’ve done (figuratively).
Do you remember how I started the article with me feeling that “what I do” isn’t “what I wish I did”? My wish list has many items and priorities constantly change. One day I wish I’d have more social impact, then I come up with a crafting project and on the next day I tell myself I‘ve got all to many projects and should just calm down and spend time with the family doing nothing. In short, my feelings are a mess and a constant source of restlessness. I’ve gpt so many dreams, I don’t really know what my most important ones are that I want to pursue.
The goal of this canvas is to finally bring order to the chaos in my head. And also show me how much the things I already do contribute to a life well spent.
Since there isn’t a “meaning of life”-canvas yet, I had to invent one. I dubbed it the “Do / Dream Canvas”.
Without further addoo, here are the steps you need to take if you wan’t to do it for yourself (which I reccommend, if you’ve got the same problem as I had)
- I wrote sticky notes with everything I spend a significant amount of time on (one thing per note)
- Next where the things I wasn’t doing yet or not doing enough of it.
(again, one per sticky note. If you’ve already noted it down during №1 you don’t have to write it down again) - Now let’s prepare the canvas below.
I added two axis to my table (since I don’t own a whiteboard or flipchart).
The horizontal axis → shows how often I do something
The vertical axis ↑ how important it is to me - Then its time to place all the sticky notes on the canvas.
All done?
Oukay, now it gets juicy.
- The top left section ↖ are the things that we dream of. Hence the name of the canvas. Doing more of this will add more meaning, satisfaction, enlightment, bacon or what ever you’re looking for to your life.
For me, this was: Social Work, home schooling our kids, Thinking about ways to introduce Kids to UX and Design - In the top right ↗ you’ll find the things that you’re already doing that are most likely worth the time. This is the second part of the name :)
Mine where: Time with my family, outdoor activities, build meaningful relationships at our new home, our veggie-fruit-berries garden - Below in the bottom right ↘ are things we spend a lot of time on that don’t really add to our well being. These are the items we should quit to free up time for our dreams in the top left section. (Although we probably can’t get rid ot them all — I considered to stop cleaning, but my wife is a bit more narrow-minded than me…).
The items I want to do less of, are: social media binging, watch youtube videos, start a thousand things without finishing them, isnichwahr.de (german 9gag) - The items in the bottom left ↙ are anual things like tax returns or sex with the wife. They’re most likely mandatory, so not much we can do about them. But, if we placed one of our dreams in that area it’s safe to remove it from our bucket list.
One of the dreams I removed from my list, was making my own furniture (for now).
Conclusion
If you’ve made it so far, you’re further than I’d expected.
Thanks for sticking around.
This was a very helpful excercise for me. My every-day take away is that while the small unimportant things like browsing a fun site or binging social media don’t feel like they take up much time, the time of day I waste on them is often when I would be the most productive. For example, I do enjoy watching youtube videos and don’t plan to fully quit this. But if I do this right after the kids go to bed, I waste that quality time on something recreational. Later in the evening, once I get annoyed enough at me for wasting that much time, it’s usually already past 11 when I start working on things that really matter to me. Since I previously removed most of the social apps from my phone or moved them from my home screen, I feel I’m improving my focus.
And for the question “I’m just a spoiled brat entering the mid-life crisis”, I’ll leave the answer up to you. Let me know in the comments below 👇
