First Ourselves: 10 Tips for Finding Time to Relax

A lack of time often keeps women from implementing self-care. Women lead busy lives, managing households, families, jobs, and relationships. Self-care can feel like one more item on an already overpacked to-do list. This is when women throw their hands in the air and give up before they've even begun.

Instead, let's find ways to create pockets of time throughout the day: time that you can spend doing something you love, relaxing, indulging in a hobby, or focusing on yourself.

Here are ten ways to free up your time for self-care:

Recognize the expansive nature of time. Have you ever noticed how the more money you earn, the more money you spend? Likewise, the more time you have, the more you'll fill it up with tasks to do. Turn the expansive nature of time to your advantage by intentionally limiting your time. I give myself two hours in the morning to do my writing for the day, I stop working at 4:30 p.m., and tackle housework in 30 minute intervals. If I know I don't have all day to write, or to do the laundry, I find ways to get it done in the time I do have alloted.
Keep a time log. Just as it's helpful to find out where your money's going by tracking your spending, tracking your time reaps similar benefits. Take 3 days of a typical week and track your time. You may find, as I did, that you waste hours doing things like surfing the internet, boredom shopping (see below), or procrastinating...time that could be allocated to self-care. 10 minutes here and there eventually adds up to an hour.
Focus your time in blocks. By keeping a time log, I found that I mismanaged my time by moving back and forth, from one task to the other. When you take on too many things at once, it takes longer than completing one thing at a time. Go through all of your email in one sitting; have blocks of time for web research; group your errands.
Manage your energy, not your time. When do you have the most energy? Use that time to tackle your most important tasks. For most people, that's the morning. Use times when you have lower energy, such as the afternoon, for more mundane tasks, such as cooking dinner or returning phone calls.
Move self-care to the morning. Most women wait until nighttime, when everyone's sleeping and the house is quiet, to have time to themselves. But this can lead to staying up late and a poor night's sleep, making self-care counterproductive. Move your alone time to the morning hours and reap the same benefits of a quiet house. You'll also start your day on a positive note, which impacts all areas of your life.
Start strong. The mornings are not only a great time to pamper yourself, but also to tackle your "big rocks," as Stephen Covey calls them. Take the three things you absolutely want to accomplish in a day and complete them before noon. For me, this means exercise (self-care, meditation time, and stress relief all combined into one), writing, and work tasks. Now my afternoons are free to connect with my children, tackle household chores, and even read a book. Living this way has transformed my relationship with time: I read more, exercise regularly, get more work done, write consistently, and have more playtime with my family.
Schedule appointments, such as dentist and doctor visits, around your schedule---not theirs. Because I work best in the mornings, I safeguard that time. During the workweek, I schedule all appointments, children's lessons, most errands, and even girlfriend time for the afternoon. This greatly increases my productivity. For years I did otherwise, trying to be accommodating to other's needs, but was frustrated because I felt like I "got nothing done" for the day. Now I safeguard my mornings (see tip #3) so I meet my needs, first, so I can meet other's needs later on in the day.
Question the "should" voice. So many of the obligations that women take on aren't "necessary," but things we feel like we should, or have to, do. Make a list of your "shoulds," everything from sending out Christmas cards, to being the family gift buyer, to books you have to read. What can you delegate; what can you simplify; what can you remove as an obligation? I do this exercise regularly, at least once a month, and I always feel ten pounds lighter afterwords. Recently, I went through all my lists---lists of things to buy, books to read, house projects, work projects---and eliminated 1/3 of my tasks. Why haven't I sent out a Christmas card yet? Because I don't want to. What a relief to let it go, and move on.
Are you overinformed? We live in a world where we are bombarded with news. How much time do you spend feeling like you have to keep up with fashion trends, news, information, or celebrity gossip? How much of that information did you actually need at the moment, or even act upon? I recently threw away 90% of my files---recipes, decorating ideas, craft projects, tips that I'd saved---because they'd been sitting in my filing cabinet, unused. With the internet, you can find anything you need to know. Likewise, you don't have to keep up with news that you don't need to know right now.
Stop "boredom" shopping. Window shopping; swinging by T.J. Maxx, the mall, or the thrift store just to see what's arrived; surfing stores on-line: these are all ways women fritter away their time. I discovered this truth about myself when I kept a time log for a week (see #2.) (I also realized that I bought things, not out of need, but just to have something new.) Now I shop only when I need something, saving me both time and money.