Maybe making new friends isn’t your goal or focus – maybe it’s managing the friends you currently have! Do you find yourself having trouble juggling all the different aspects of your life (friends, family, school, work, down time)? Are you feeling distressed about not meeting certain “expectations” around how you should spend your time? Now might be a good time to reflect carefully on how you spend your time and how you might like to spend it in the future.
The following exercise is adapted from the Public Service Alliance of Canada’s exercise entitled “Caring for Labour Activists – Time Management” (2022) which was originally used for labour activists to budget their time between competing demands so they could achieve their activism goals, live by their values, and avoid burnout. The original manual and exercise can be found in the Further Reading section at the end of this toolkit.
The point of this exercise is to think about your time as a precious commodity that you intentionally distribute amongst all the different areas of your life. It’s basically a “time-budget”. This activity is not meant to result in a rigid schedule that remains unchanged forever. The core idea is looking at how you can realistically spend your time doing what you have to do and what you want to do. It is a tool to help balance commitments, uncover what is important to you, and (hopefully) avoid burnout (academic, professional, social).
Remember, if you are not able to allocate time (or as much time as you would like) in the areas that are important to you because of the demands of work, school, family, or health reasons – that is not a personal failure. There are many things in our daily lives that we simply have to do in order to survive and that can leave little to no time to do the things we want to do. These systemic forces take time to change and are largely outside of our immediate control. It is normal for that to bring up feelings of fear, overwhelm, hopelessness, and dread. Be gentle with yourself as you go through this exercise. Take breaks, talk about it with a trusted person or professional, and take care.
As you go through this exercise, ask yourself:
- What can I control?
- What can I say “no” to?
- What can I say “yes” to?
- How would I like to see my time-budget change in the short, medium, and long-term?
- When would I like to review my time-budget next to see where I am at?
Click here for the Time Budget worksheet and instructions.
