UConn alum Jeff Davidson ’73 (BUS), ’74 MBA, is known as The Work-Life Balance Expert and is the author of 56 books, including The 60-Second Organizer, The 60-Second Self-Starter, and The 60-Second Innovator.
The following is an excerpt from his new book, Simpler Living (Skyhorse Publishing, 2010).
The responsibilities of job, home, and family all too often transform the daily routine into one big blur. Carving out quality leisure time becomes difficult.
True leisure means engaging in a pleasurable and rewarding activity without being preoccupied by other aspects of your life. You can’t force leisure into an otherwise frenzied schedule and expect it to feel good. Sometimes, the strains you experience during the week make you place great emphasis on weekends and other days off. You hope to relax, but the pressure is enormous. You can’t rest even when you have the time to do so. Your mind may not be free to enjoy it.
Make no mistake: Leisure is a fundamental component of your life. If you don’t have frequent and rewarding leisure time, you’re missing out.
When time is at a premium, leisure activities are usually the first items to disappear from the daily schedule. One of the advantages of simplifying your life is that you’ll have more windows of opportunity to do stuff just for fun. Think of leisure as your reward for all those little extraneous things that eat up precious minutes of your day.
Overly Optimistic
If you routinely forfeit your leisure time because you have “more important things to do,” you may be underestimating how much time those other things actually take. Most people routinely shortchange themselves on the amount of time required to complete a given task, according to research at an American Psychological Association conference. The problem is a failure to evaluate performance honestly. Folks generalize from those rare occasions when everything went perfectly.
If you want to get tasks done on time so that you can enjoy leisure activities, realistically calculate during a project’s planning stages the hours that will be required. Then increase the time commitment by 25 percent to safely allow for unexpected delays.
Relearning to Relax
If you’re unaccustomed to having free time, you may need a brief refresher course in choosing and planning leisure activities. Here are the basics.
Indulge Your Desires
Devote one afternoon or evening per week entirely to yourself. Use those hours to do something, anything, that you enjoy. Listen to your favorite music. Assemble a jigsaw puzzle. Dig in your garden. Do whatever you always wish you could but never seem to find time for. And do it where there’s nothing to remind you of other obligations.
Get Lost
If you find yourself constantly watching the clock while participating in a leisure activity, you’re not truly relaxing. Let yourself go, to the point where you lose track of the hour. In this state of timelessness, you can derive optimum benefits from relaxation.
Opt for Low-Tech
The popular fascination with technological advances in all areas of life has diverted attention from the simple pleasures of many traditional pastimes. People think they must have the best, most up-to-date equipment available to enjoy themselves. When keeping up with trends becomes the focus, the sheer pleasure of leisure is lost. Let yourself have fun without trying to outdo your friends and neighbors.
Where do you weigh in on the leisure scale? This brief quiz can help you find out. Simply answer yes or no to each question.
- I fully understand the value of leisure in my life.
- I have at least one rewarding weekend a month.
- I take care of errands during the week so I don’t use up my weekends.
- I plan and take an annual or semiannual vacation.
- I engage in rewarding, relaxing hobbies or other interests.
- I regularly exercise at a tennis club, pool club, spa, or another facility.
- I can be comfortable doing nothing at all at selected times.
- I can relax without the use of chemical substances.
- I engage in regularly scheduled leisure time activities.
- I have achieved a reasonable balance between work and play.
Tally up your yes responses. If you have five or fewer, you definitely need more leisure in your life.
Reprinted with permission from Simpler Living by Jeff Davidson, Skyhorse Publishing Inc. © 2010
