How much time do you spend as a quality time with your family, whether they’re your parents, significant other, children, grandparents, siblings, etc.? For example, how often do you have lunch together, communicate, work together, share hobbies, etc.? Assess how much quality time you spend on these activities, and how often you do only that and nothing else (for example, time sitting at a table with your family when everyone is immersed in their mobile phones is not considered quality time).

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How much time would you like to allocate for your family so that you wouldn’t feel guilty about not giving them enough time (be guided by your personal sense rather than the demands or norms imposed by society)? How much time do you think you need to spend close to each other, to be closer and happier, to maintain strong ties, trust, and community? Does the time it take you to feel the completeness of relationships or family match the time your loved ones need from you?

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How much time do you spend working? When calculating the actual time you spend working, add up everything: work brought home, reading/writing emails in the evenings, work calls after business hours and on weekends, reading work literature in your spare time, talking about work (asking co-workers and friends for advice), time for trips to and from work (unless at that time you are doing something assigned to another area of ​life, such as engaging in an intellectual activity, talking to children, calling a friend/other family members, exercising, etc. This time should also include additional courses (if it concerns the development of your work competencies or training) studies, attending conferences, searching for information on changing jobs, etc.

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Ask yourself, how much time would you really like to spend working? Does this time fit into your official set work hours? Don’t you feel guilty about working overtime because you would like to spend this time with family or dedicate it to your hobbies, social life, or other areas of life?

What should you do to be able to get near your imaginary ideal time for work? Is it enough to discipline yourself (for example by turning off the computer, closing the office door, or not bringing the work home even in your head)? Do you have to make specific decisions regarding changes and agree on them with co-workers/your manager?

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How much time have you spent this week on sports, exercise, or leisure? How much time did you spend moving in the fresh air (the distance from the bus stop to your home or from your car and the shops don’t count)? How much time do you spend paying attention to what you eat and what food you buy? How much time do you take to prepare or grow food? How often do you take care of your health (allocate time for massage, relaxation exercises, provide the body with supplements)? How much time do you spend taking an interest in health topics and specifically, your well-being, whether it’s tracking your body weight, knowing your BMI, etc.?

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How much time do you think should be spent maintaining your health and fitness? Do you have an ideal body shape (how long you would like to live, look, be flexible or fast) that you would like to achieve and imagine how much time it would take to achieve it? How much time do the people you emulate spend? How important is this area to you in the long run, and how realistic is it to find time for it in other areas? Could you find the time for health and fitness without taking it away from other areas of life, but rather, in combination with other areas, such as playing sports with your family? What amount of time do you consider it healthy to be healthy? How much is it worth to invest in discovering what you eat and how it affects you? How often should a preventive health check be performed to avoid regrets in the future?

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It’s likely that your sleep and wake-up times will be different on weekdays and weekends, as will the duration of your sleep. And yet, how different? Add both the time of the work week and weekend time. Count the time you spend sleeping, not how much you actually managed to sleep, but the quality of sleep can be improved, but not at the expense of duration. While ‘naps’ have enough advantages to mention them separately, we will skip them here.

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There are a few people in the world for whom 5 hours of sleep is enough (there is little chance that you are one of these people). The average number mentioned in scientific literature is 8 hours (between 7—9 hours). How much would be required specifically for you approximately, so that after a few hours of waking up, you wouldn’t want to ‘collapse’ again? Or so you wouldn’t have to wake up to coffee when you open your eyes, or you wouldn’t have to recover during the weekend for the working week. So, how much after per week and in total do you need?

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This ‘foot’ of balance is all about you. The things that you choose to do because you like it. Not the employer, not the significant other , not the children, but for you. There is a saying, ‘if you won’t plan your life, someone will plan it for you’. This is the time you should plan and do it yourself. ‘It’ includes sports, hobbies, travel, and reading, so if this includes things you mentioned in physical activity or intellectual activity, it’s better. In a sense, there are even more hours for balance in your week than 168 hours. Does this include watching TV and browsing the Internet? As with any area that should help you discover more balance, the key question should be, do I feel better, more energetic, or even more tired and exhausted after spending time in that area?

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Everyone is limited by obligations, whether they’re personal, financial, etc., but it is important to remember that we all possess unique personalities—there is no one else in the world like you, and no one can say how much time and to whom you should devote it to. No hobbies will be dear if we think about money for food, but the food at a luxury restaurant can be tasteless as well if we had to put in a tiring week or even a month of work. Sometimes, even without feeling a certain need or without time, you need to take a step back, distance yourself from all activities and responsibilities, and ask yourself if what you have and what you do makes you happy? Todd Henry, author of the book ‘The Accidental Creative’, advised writing down everything that comes to mind when talking about how to plan a day at work, whether it’s for work or personal reasons, because ‘if it’s on your mind, it’s on your mind’. That is, if you need an hour a week to clear your head of thoughts or replenish them, take an hour. If you need a full day, take a day. If you don’t take an hour for yourself now, it may take months or even years to do so in the future. When people start meditating, at first, five minutes a day is enough for them, even much too much, because it seems selfish and irrational to devote time to doing ‘nothing’ in this way. But if you check out the latest studies on happiness, you will find that it is irrational not to devote enough time to yourself.

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Everyone feels and expresses emotions every day. The only question is, how successfully do we manage to do it, and do we understand and notice it? How do we react to co-workers, to children, to the other side, how we transfer emotions accumulated at work to personal life (and vice versa, from home to work). The way we react to others tells us no less than about those who caused us to feel those emotions. But how much time do we take to understand why a person or some phenomenon caused us to experience one emotion or another? Do we learn something from that and improve ourselves and others? Or do we just cut everything off (even if only in our minds) by saying: ‘I’m totally fine, but if you have a problem, deal with it’. Do you take any time after any conflict to consider why it happened? How much time do you spend on that?

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Most interpersonal conflicts can be attributed to several things: not showing or hiding emotions, an inability to show emotions appropriately, and an inability to properly respond to the emotions shown by others. Emotions, in themselves, are neither bad nor good, it’s just a matter of how we show or accept them. Good emotional health does not mean a steady state of happiness. These are the specific abilities of a person to accept oneself and function in life: the ability to realise oneself, endure specific stressful situations, as well as experience happiness, sadness, and pain. How much time would you like to devote to this? For example, to understanding your emotions, daily reflection, rest from work, challenges, stress and tension, as well as time with yourself?

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How much time did you take this week to learn/understand something new (daily news doesn’t count)? Have you read a scientific, historical, or biographical book that wasn’t work-related? Tried a new recipe? Sports? Have you figured out how to fix a broken device and at least tried to do so? Played chess? Solved a crossword puzzle? Watched a documentary? Got through the instruction? Read a Wikipedia article? In other words, how much did you stimulate your brain when you liked it?

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How much time do you believe you would require an intellectual activity (including current prioritising) so you don’t feel your life is becoming stale and that you can still learn something new to become a better, more interesting, more universal version of yourself?

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How much time do you spend each week on spirituality or religion (in a way that you understand and personally define it)? For prayer, religious practice, yoga, meditation? Visiting holy places, reading religious, spiritual literature? Searching for your place in this world?

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How much time would you devote to religion or spirituality if someone gave you the necessary hours to do so? How much would you pay if you knew that discovering this side of your personality would make you 5%, 10%, or even 20% happier? How much more or less important does this part of your personality seem to you than other parts? Why?

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How much time do you spend on time with friends, relationships with other people, and activities that contribute to the well-being of the community? For example, various activities with friends, volunteering, collective activity with neighbours planting trees or collecting rubbish, organising Christmas parties at work, or events at a children’s school, etc.? This area should also include activities involving participation in a political party, time spent on membership in public and non-governmental organisations, activities concerning a religious community, contributions to charity, etc., anything unrelated to your work or family life.

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How much time would you like to spend on social ties or community activities? Friends and good relationships with them contribute to good emotional health, physical health and personal growth thorough rest, strong self-esteem and other positive attributes in your life. On their deathbed, people are far more likely to regret breaking up with friends than not doing things that are not done.

Also, do you feel that you contribute too little to society? Community activities or volunteering are great ways to test yourself in a completely different field. Try something you never dared but always wanted. Various studies show that such activities improve mental health, a sense of self-realisation, strengthen social ties, increase self-pride, etc.

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How much time do you spend tidying up your home, cooking, shopping, washing, working in the garden, cleaning your car, appliances and dealing with any other household issues?

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How much time would you like to devote to this? Do you share housework and household issues equally with your significant other and other family members?

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A waste of time is a few minutes of unintentional browsing of Instagram or the news flow. It even includes time with friends you didn’t really want to meet but you do so every week out of inertia since your study years. There can be traffic jams to and work when you spend an hour just listening to music or news. It’s that half-hour in bed when, instead of jumping on a yoga mat and doing an exercise, you just exercise your thumb on your phone screen. This, and the fifth episode of a TV show, which you just started, when you forgot the reason why you watched the first one. How many of these unconscious minutes could be turned into the pages of a book you read, new tried-and-tested recipes, or even podcasts, or a meeting with a friend due to completing a job sooner? How many minutes and even hours a day would you like to recover? Those that you know were wasted?

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When we talk about wasted time, the keyword is ‘unconsciously’. Sometimes you really need to let your thoughts wander. It is needed; it is recommended. Still, the vast majority of our ‘wanderings’ are clever planning of someone’s time for us. Want to read the news online? Schedule half an hour in the morning and half an hour in the evening—you are not a news anchor and you do not necessarily need to know everything all the time. Want to browse online? Great—schedule some time for that. Do you want to stay in bed and chat in the morning instead of exercising? If this is your actual plan and not succumbing to technological weaknesses or lack of will, great, it means you really need it. By planning this time in advance and putting it in separate time blocks, you are guaranteed to save more than an hour a week, and for sure, nothing will vanish while you focus on other areas of your life.

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