You Have Time

Recently I bought a book for a friend and myself to read called, "The Best Yes" by author Lysa TerKeurst. I heard her preach in a podcast that I listen to and thought she did a great job of conveying God's word through every day life experiences/difficulties as a woman. I then was speaking with my friend about life situations we were going through and thought Lysa's book definitely spoke to us both as we are trying to navigate through marriage, life, family, and faith. 

"The Best Yes" is a book that helps women realize the weight of their decisions and how we often forget that it's OKAY to say no to many things so that later you can say YES to the things that need your time the most. I am the worst person at saying No. Part of my personality is that I want to please people and sometimes take it so far that I forget that I am saying Yes for that person and not for myself. It's not a bad thing, being there for people and helping is a wonderful trait to have until you become so overwhelmed that you can no longer function as a normal person. 

In the first Chapter Lysa speaks about time. There are 168 hours a week and 24 hours in a day that we devote to family, work, church, friends, chores, hobbies, etc. Then there is that list of "Wants" that we never quite get around to. You know... our list, New Years resolutions, things we want to accomplish. 

My List: 

Go running 3-5 times a week

Travel to Hawaii & Europe

Go to see P!nk in Concert

Make new friends

Go on a Mission Trip

Coach my future child's soccer team

These are all things on my list that may happen over the spand of my life but many of those things on my list could happen now and I simply choose to waste my time filling it with other crap. To really see where my time was going I took Lysa's "You Have Time" Quiz.

http://thebestyes.com/time-assessment-tool

Here are my results:

My weeks mainly consist of Work and Sleeping. 

Work = 40 hrs per week on average

Sleep= 8 hrs a day x 7 = 56 hrs 

72.3% or 96 hrs a week goes towards two things that I have to do. I need sleep and I need to work for money. 

Where does the other left over time go? Eating, Church, Family, Errands, Personal Hygiene, and "other". 

As you can see in the bar graph on most all days I only use around 20.25 hours out of a 24 hour day. Which amounts to 141.75 hours a week out of a total of 168 hours.

I waste 3.75 hours every day. 

Which leads to 26.25 hours a week.

Which is around 116 hours a month. 

And 1,376.75 hours a year!

Where does it go? I know exactly where it goes. 

TV time. Social Media. Here Blogging. But really if I'm being honest... mainly TV. 

Does TV fulfill me? No, but I enjoy it. 

Monday: Big Bang Theory

Tuesday: Intervention

Wednesday: Stalker

Thursday: Project Runway

Friday: Whatever chick flick is on 

But... LBH here. (Let's Be Honest) 

These TV shows that I enjoy watching or that I look forward to are 30 minutes to 1 hour long. I could still manage to accomplish watching them and still have time left over for other things. The rest of my time goes to TV that I don't even enjoy or look forward to seeing, it's just on and I'm tired so I watch. 

I've realized with this exercise that "I Have Time". 

I can plan better meals to eat at home to make cooking fun again. I can absolutely use that time to work out a few days a week. I can plan more house projects that I will actually put aside the time to do. That sewing machine I have can get dusted off. 

  

I am excited to continuing reading along so that I may grow and become better at saying No to the things that aren't My Best Yes.

I encourage you to take the less than 5 minute Time assessment Tool over at TheBestYes.com to see how much time you have to devote to the things you would like to get out of life.

http://thebestyes.com/time-assessment-tool

I would love to hear your results and maybe some of the things you would like to accomplish with the "extra" time that you have left over during the days/weeks.