Enjoy life - do whatever makes you happy!

It seems that all too often these days we are taking on the advice of others, whether the advice is coming from friends, family, or so called experts. Everyone seems to have an opinion on the 'right' way to live life. What you should eat, wear, drink (or not drink), how to raise children, where to invest money, the list goes on.

There is no 'right' way to live life, but there is only 'one' way to live life and that is to live life doing whatever makes you happy! Happiness will be different for every single person so don't ever feel guilty for doing what makes you happy. Don't judge others and what they do, as long as they are happy in life then what should it matter to you what they are doing! Don't envy others and their happiness, you choose everything you do in life so choose to do what makes you happy. 

I'm not busy!!

I'm not busy says she who by 11am on a Saturday morning has already cycled 70km, washed and hung out 3 loads of laundry, cleaned out the fridge and freezer, menu planned and grocery shopped and even washed one very dirty bike!!

This past week I attended a networking event hosted by Westpac Bank where the guest speaker was Kate Christie, author of a book called Me Time - The Professional Woman's Guide to finding 30 guilt-free hours a month! It was a great event and she spoke about being busy and how we can be less busy in our lives, sharing 5 key tips!

Positive Mindset

I don't know how many times when someone asks me how I am my immediate response is 'I'm good, but so busy at the moment' and quickly the conversation can turn to a negative one about how busy everyone is. So yesterday when a colleague asked how I was I replied with 'I'm really good!' Her response back was 'busy though right?' to which I laughed and said no! My response no doubt surprised her so I had to launch into an explanation about the event I had attended the previous evening. From now on I'm going to think of myself as being super productive which is far more positive than saying I'm busy! And to be honest 80% of my busyness is all of my own doing!

Stop Multitasking!

Apparently despite the common belief that women are great multitaskers there is only 2% of the population that are genuinely good at multi-tasking so to be more productive in our days we should all stop multitasking!! When it comes to the work place I completely agree with this, I know how disruptive a simple check of an email or text can be when I'm in the middle of working on something. I even pulled myself up the other day when I was trying to pull together 2 presentations at the same time and could quickly see a disaster unfolding so closed one and focused on finishing one at a time.  However at home I genuinely do believe I am a good multitasker so perhaps I fit within the 2% of the population!! I can cook 2 meals whilst doing the dishes and putting on the laundry! Sure there have been times when the recipe hasn't quite gone to plan because I've missed out vital ingredients, but largely at home I think I can multitask!!

Say 'no' in a nice way!

So many of my friends and colleagues complain all the time about how busy they are but they generally have one thing in common, they can't say no to people, they are too nice!! You don't have to be rude when saying no, but for our own sanity we have to stop committing to too many things and learn how to politely say no to people.  There is absolutely nothing wrong with saying no!! Choose the things you want to say yes to and politely say no to anything else!!

Put a price on your time

Work out an hourly rate for yourself and think about how much money is then wasted on time zapping activities, the example that was used on the evening was that if you value your time at $50 an hour and you spend one hour per day on Facebook then you are wasting $18,000 per year!! Now I'm pretty sure if someone said to you that it was going to cost you $50/hour to use Facebook most people would stop using it!! The other tip was to insource!! There are plenty of things your kids can be doing to help out and save you time, apparently a 7 year old is capable of making their own school lunches - hopefully they are also capable of cleaning up the mess afterwards! I wonder what chores I can start giving to an 18month old, other than of course the laundry which she seems to have mastered!!

Outsourcing

Going on with the theme of valuing your time she spoke about how often it can be cheaper to outsource activities when you put an hourly rate on your time, often you can get someone to do something at a lower rate and more efficiently!! I am all for outsourcing having recently rehired a cleaner  that has given me back my weekends to focus on activities that I enjoy and spending more valuable time with my precious little girl.  Sure I could be saving that money but if you value your time as money too then really I'm ahead.

After the event I started to think about where all my time went and how I could save more time, I realised quickly that I spend far too much time on social media and other online activities with this often eating into precious sleep time. So this weekend I am going out and buying an alarm clock so I don't have to use my phone as an alarm and each night when I go to bed the phone can stay in the kitchen! So many an evening I go to bed and I just do a quick check of emails which turns into a check of Instagram and then Facebook then realestate.com and so forth and before I know it I've lost an hour of sleep time!! I'm also going to be smarter with cooking, there is no need to cook gourmet meals each night of the week, no one died from eating just meat and veg, sure it's not quite as exciting but such a quick and easy option and still very nutritious!!

So next time someone asks you how you are, don't say busy and if you are super busy then think about what you can do to change it and what you would do with your time if you could get back an hour a week!!