Have you ever wondered why you’re always working and you’ve just got no time to have fun anymore? When you look at your friends going out and enjoying themselves, or you gaze out of the window and wish you were anywhere but in the office or at your desk, do you ever think there must be something going wrong? Having fun is hugely important if you want to have a well-balanced, healthy life, so making time for it is essential, and you may be able to free up more time than you thought possible. Here are some reasons why time for fun might be limited, and some ideas on what you can do about it.
Be More Focused At Work
If you get distracted when you’re meant to be working, that work will take longer to complete. Co-workers who want a chat, toys on your desk, emails pinging through that seem to need your attention immediately (but that can really wait at least a few minutes while you finish what you’re doing) and so on all make working efficiently much more difficult than it needs to be, and this could be why you’re working late into the evening or over the weekend to catch up.
By eliminating the distractions at work, you will find that you get your work done more quickly, giving you a lot more time to have fun and get some free time to relax in. This might be easier said than done in some cases, but using noise-canceling headphones, asking to be allowed to work in a different room, and shutting off the internet when you’re trying to get something finished might work for you.
Learn To Say No
Maybe you’ve got some free time at last, and you’re planning to read a new book that you bought months ago, or perhaps go out with your family, or even learn the Martingale betting system so that you are better in the casinos. That’s wonderful until you are asked to complete another assignment or help with some other piece of work, at which point because you find it hard to say no, you lose that precious free time, and life just becomes one endless day at work.
If this happens once or twice, that’s not a problem – over time can be useful, especially when you’re saving up for something important like a vacation or to pay off debts. However, when it happens every weekend or on a much more regular basis and it is interfering with your life in general, pulling you away from days out with your kids or not allowing you to enjoy the simple pleasures in life, it’s time to learn to say no. You really don’t have to agree to everything that is asked of you, and you don’t have to give a reason why you can’t do it if you don’t want to. This is your free time, and you are the one who gets to arrange what you do in it.
Keep a Work-Life Balance
It’s good to have friends at work, but if you treat your workday as an extension of a night out with friends, nothing will get done. The longer you do this for, the more work will build up until you find that you no longer get to see your friends anymore because you’ve got far too much to do. It’s important to treat work seriously and do your best while you’re there. Working productively and efficiently means that you have more time for fun and can unwind, making it easier to get back to work the next day and be productive once again.
Commit To Appointments
What happens when someone asks you to go somewhere with them? Do you immediately say you’d love to (assuming you would love to – you can say no, as mentioned above if it’s not your thing), or do you say you’ll let them know because of work? If it’s the latter, you’re making a mistake – you’re allowing the possibility of work to be there, even when it shouldn’t be. That means that if you are asked to work, or you need to catch up, you’ve already made time to do it.
If you say yes to your friends and family when they invite you somewhere, then you don’t have the time to do the work, so it will have to wait and having fun finally gets the priority.
Sort Your Vacation Early
The earlier you book your vacation, the better. Firstly, everyone at work will know you’re not going to be available for those two weeks or so, so they know not to ask you to do anything for them near that time. Second, the longer you leave it, the harder it will be to actually commit to, especially when work is piling up and you start to wonder whether you really should be going away at all.
Booking your vacation well in advance usually means you can get a great deal and include the hotel and flights that you want as well – leaving it to the last minute might also be a good way to save money, but there won’t be so much choice. Plus, if it’s all booked, you’ll have something wonderful to look forward to, and that’s good for your mental health and your general well-being.
Don’t Spend All Day On Your Smartphone
Smartphones are terribly addictive, and you might not even realize just how often you check your emails or Facebook feed – you might not even know that you’re doing it at all until you’re staring at the screen. Adding up all the time you spend on your smartphone doing unnecessary things could certainly come to a large number of minutes wasted – minutes that could have been put to better use getting your work or chores done, meaning that by the end of the day you’re not behind on what you were meant to do.
When you have completed all the jobs that you have scheduled, then you can look at your phone and answer those less important texts and emails, or post up on Facebook about what you’re planning to do now that you’ve freed up a lot of time to do it in!