If you lead a very busy life, you may be wondering how you are going to fit in enough time for regular meditation. Many of us have work and family commitments, but often all that is needed is a little planning and reorganisation to help you incorporate meditation into your daily life. After a while, it will become a habit.
Meditate Regularly
When the word “meditation” is mentioned, some people automatically think of ascetic hermits and monks spending days in a trance-like state in isolated caves and temples.
Although some very dedicated practitioners of meditation do spend their time like that, for the majority of people there is no need to go to such extremes. You only need to meditate for a few minutes at a time, but in order to make steady and noticeable progress, you should try to meditate regularly.
Effective time management
If your life is hectic and full of commitments, you may not find it easy to think about having to fit in something else, but it may help if you look onto this one as a commitment to yourself. Your meditation periods are going to be times that you can spend entirely on yourself, which is a very good reason for finding the time to do it. After all, everyone is entitled to spare at least a few minutes each day for themselves.
Managing your time more effectively will have other benefits too. You may find that you are more organised and have less pressure and more leisure time. This will help you to be more relaxed and therefore better able to concentrate on your meditation, which in turn will help you to feel calmer, too.
A busy life is no barrier to practising meditation, all you need is a few minutes.
Saving Time
Making time for meditation needn’t be difficult. Start by drawing up a timetable for yourself: it doesn’t have to be exact, just a timetable of a typical week laid out on a piece of paper. List all the things you normally do on a regular basis, such as going to work (include travelling time), taking the kids to school or doing the shopping on a Saturday afternoon. Decide roughly what time you go to bed each evening, and block out time for that.
When you have got all the regular events down on paper, make a list of tasks that you should do regularly but may sometimes miss. These could include weeding the garden, for example, or filling your bills and letters.
Allocate enough time for these jobs. Since they may vary from week to week, you may want to allow two or three hours at a certain time each week to catch up on these tasks before they get out of hand. After you have done this, take another look at your timetable.
Writing down a timetable of your week may help you to pinpoint times for meditation.
You may be surprised at how much more time there is than you originally thought. Now you have to find out where the rest of the time is being spent. Perhaps you have been spending more time watching TV than you realised, for instance, or doing things for other people than they could quite easily do for themselves.
If you find you have plenty of blank spaces in your timetable but can’t account for them, you may find it helpful to keep a diary of all your activities for a week and note carefully how much time you have spent on each one. You may find that the shopping actually takes you twice as long as you thought, or that you forgot to include a regular task in your schedule. A diary will help you to spot these things, and to plug the holes in your timetable.
Allocating yourself enough time for chores can make them seem more pleasurable.
Making Priorities and Delegating Tasks
Now, it is time to make a list of all the one-off jobs you have been meaning to do, but haven’t found the time for yet, such as painting the front door, calling a relative, or oiling that squeaky hinge. Include everything, no matter how small. Then prioritise them by giving them numbers. For example, you could allot number 1 to the most urgent task, then number 2 to the next most urgent job, and so on. Now go back to your timetable, and allocate a period of time each week to clearing the tasks. Tick them off as you do them, and add any new ones to the list as they arise. Renumber them when necessary.
When you have done this, study your timetable and see what time you have left. Very likely you will have some spare slots for meditation, but if your timetable is still packed, then you should look carefully at what is using up all your time. If it is work, then do another timetable for work and prioritise all your tasks within it. If you still can’t fit them all in, then you will have identified a problem: you are overworked! If this is the case, you should take steps to ease the situation: get help and delegate any tasks you don’t need to do yourself.
Learn to delegate and give everyone in the household-specific tasks to do.
Free up some time to spend on yourself.
If you are spending too much time doing housework or looking after other people when they are capable of doing things themselves, ask for help here too. Sometimes all that is needed is a simple request to spur people into action. If your requests are ignored, however, you may have to be firm!
Other Time-savers
Changing a few of your every day habits can often save a lot of time during the day. Try some of these simple techniques and see how much time you can save:
- Open your mail over the wastepaper basket, and bin unnecessary items immediately.
- Answer letters the day they come in.
- File things away as you deal with them.
- Control the amount of time you spend on the telephone. If someone you know is a chatterbox, try calling at times when you know you can keep the call short, such as just before that person’s favourite TV programme. Your telephone bill and your timetable will love you for it!
- Limit your time spent watching TV: choose the programmes you particularly want to watch, and then switch off the TV when you have finished watching.
- Be vigilant about people offloading jobs onto you. For example, if someone says to you ‘can you ring so and so’, explain that you haven’t got time and suggest that he or she makes the phone call instead.
Limiting how long you spend on phone calls can be a great way of saving time.
These are just some of the ways by which you can make more time in your life to meditate. There are many, many more. Try some of the suggestions straight away, so that you can start planning in your meditation times and enjoy the benefits that regular practice can bring.