How to find the time? We all want to focus more on meaningful activities – especially activities that put us in the blissful, elusive state known as flow. But how much time do we allow ourselves to pursue our very own flow activities?
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| We all want to focus more on meaningful activities – especially activities that put us into a flow state |
One of my flow activities is writing. I’ve always enjoyed it, yet I’d always struggled to make enough time for it. At some point, I therefore decided I wanted to do more of it, and I established a writing routine.
I now spend 60 minutes on a Saturday and a Sunday morning on writing: to draft blog articles by hand. To publish a blog article, complete with graphics. To translate a blog article into German. To jot down ideas. Or to engage in other writing, such as writing an email that I feel a lot of thought needs to go into. An hour to myself – something that was initially hard to fit into a weekend.
I’m not proposing that something similar might work for you, too, but would instead like to highlight a few surprising insights which I gained following the creation of my 60-minute writing routine:
1. Scheduling leisure time
I’m not advocating that we should plan every single minute of our leisure time, yet I’ve found it a surprisingly effective way to more effortlessly fit in activities that we enjoy doing. It’s a time management technique which I recommend. Scheduling leisure time meticulously does not mean you enjoy it less – on the contrary!
2. Deriving pleasure from anticipation
It’s been argued that the intensity of feelings of anticipation ahead of a pleasurable activity is similar to the intensity of feelings felt during the actual activity. This is a simple yet powerful insight: schedule an activity, and it‘ll give you something to look forward to! There’s pleasure to be gained from anticipation.
3. The correlation between time constraints and creativity
I have found the effects of setting myself a 60-minute time limit astounding. An hour goes by quickly; yet because I’m finding myself under self-imposed time pressure, I often come up with good turns of phrase and solutions to language problems in my writing more quickly. It is true that self-imposed time constraints can stimulate your creativity!
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| Self-imposed time constraints often stimulate your creativity |
If you’re looking for a new way to maximise your work and/or
leisure time, this blog post will be for you. In it I describe
noteworthy insights which I gained following the creation of my
60-minute writing routine.
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