Modern life has us on the go seemingly all the time. What with the pressures of work, the responsibilities of a home and family, taking care of kids and elderly parents, dealing with the daily commute and still trying to have some semblance of a life, it’s no wonder that we ask ourselves where the time goes.
Far too often, in order to cope in the short term with such pressure, we put our health on the line. We don’t get enough sleep, we work too late, we make poor dietary choices because they’re quicker or more convenient, we skip exercise because we need a rest and so on. All of which ends up having a detrimental effect on our health. What we end up doing is we spend our lives rushing from one task to the next and running our bodies down, the net result of which is that we make far too few good memories and reduce the amount of time we have to make them in.
Obviously, it’s very difficult to find the right balance. It might be impossible to avoid being busy sometimes – much as we’d like to spend our entire lives chilling on a beach, reading books, we’d soon run into problems when we have medical bills to pay, schooling and all the comforts and traps of modern life. There are some things you just can’t skip, but then again, there are things you can.
Kids take up a lot of our time, and may parents allow their kids to grow older without encouraging them to do more for themselves and the family. One of the main objectives of being a parent is to prepare your child for independent life. So teaching them how to do things for themselves, and actually getting them into the habit of doing so, is part of being a good parent. What your child can do will depend to a large amount on how old they are – we’re not saying you should have your six year-old prepare Sunday dinner here. But things like cleaning their shoes, washing themselves, cleaning their teeth (take a look at Toothbrush Best for some great ideas here), doing their homework and making simple snacks for themselves not only helps your child, but it helps you, too.
If time or money is an issue when it comes to getting to the gym, you can get around it by doing part of your work out at home. Going out for a run, doing your push ups and sit ups in your bedroom isn’t all that difficult. Again, you can get your kids involved. Take them to the park and play soccer with them. Obviously, as you’re an adult, you’ll have to make sure you’re a lot more active than they are in order to burn the calories you need, but this is easy enough. If you have two kids, team them up against yourself in a game of soccer or basketball – you’ll be surprised how much running you actually do.
Chores that you can’t eliminate by getting the kids involved, you could delegate to a robot. After all, we live in an age of machines – what’s the point of having them if we don’t make use of them? There are robots out there that will do everything from mowing your lawn on a regular basis, to cleaning your floors and doing simple errands. If you take care of an elderly or sick person, you can buy a robot to take care of their needs, such as bringing them the newspaper, a snack or changing the bedpan. We’re not suggesting that you leave them entirely in the care of a robot, although there are robots out there which are designed to do pretty much exactly that.
Then, look through the list of tasks you get through each week and brainstorm was to eliminate them or at least to make them simpler and easier. If you live near any of your co-workers, you could try car sharing. Not only is it better for the environment and the amount of traffic, if you’re driving only half of the time, you get more time to take a break and get your head together. Try applying this to the other tasks to ensure you have more time and take better care of your health.
