State of Mind: Consider your relationship with time

Springtime is typically a season of renewed spirit. For many, though, the realization that the calendar is already a third of the way through the year is also startling. So, when the clock is ticking and calendar flipping, how do we slow time down for the sake of our well-being?

The reality is most people spend around a third of their days sleeping and another third working. This means that on any given weekday, most adults have eight hours or less to split among anything outside of those two activities. Adding weekends, this allots about 72 hours a week or 288 hours a month of “free time.”

There are arguments to be made about the appropriateness of working hours. For example, the 40-hour work week was established during a drastically different era and has somehow, perhaps absurdly so, persisted through things like the digital revolution, increased understandings of things like worker health and productivity, and other economic and socioeconomic developments.

Beyond work and sleep, most adults will spend some amount of their time on necessary activities like eating, personal care, and caring for their home and family. The remaining available time is where things become particularly fascinating.

Between social media and streaming, adults spend an average of around five and a half hours a day — nearly 40 hours per week — on screens for reasons other than work. For teens, the average jumps to around eight hours a day, or 56 hours a week. For context, this equates to three to four full months out of the year and between four to seven years out of a 20-year period. The social media-driven perception that we must keep up with our peers’ (often inflated or, at the very least, carefully curated) adventures and vacations has also intensified demands on our time, not to mention the alarming mental health implications.

  Buy Photo

For parents and kids, consider also the explosion of time and money spent on youth sports and activities. A massive amount of time is often spent at things like weekly practices and weekends away at tournaments. Even the benefits of youth activities are questionable when weighed against the downsides of things like mental health impacts, physical injury risks, financial burdens, and opportunity costs of missing out on things like time with family or outdoors at play.

Compounding these problems, or perhaps a symptom of them, people are spending more time sitting, less time outside and more time alone than ever. Ultimately, these current dynamics of time frequently lead to stress, worry and anxiety. Changing this dynamic requires intentional effort, such as evaluating how your time is currently being spent and realigning your time to your personal priorities.

Several other strategies have been proven beneficial, such as practicing mindfulness, or purposefully focusing your attention on details of the present moment. Going for walks, reading, journaling, cooking, eating slowly, exercising, spending time outdoors, de-cluttering your home and work space, actively practicing gratitude and minimizing multitasking can all be effective. It can also be valuable to dedicate regular times to hobbies, intentionally change up your daily routine, explore a new place or activity, or learn time management strategies.

In many ways, the world seems more chaotic and hectic than ever. Not just on a national or global scale, but on a personal level. It’s perhaps easier today than ever to feel overstretched and overwhelmed. However, it’s important to recognize the things under our control that are leading to this phenomenon. And as we consider our relationship with time, we can take steps to slow down, identify our priorities, and more fully enjoy our most precious resource of time.

Bryan Busch is a licensed mental health counselor in Cedar Rapids. He also works at Folience, the parent company of The Gazette. He can be reached at bryan.busch@thegazette.com.