Let's Take Back Our Time, Together

Hi, guys!

Cal here! New idea incoming.

This will be one of the first of many posts. I’m hoping it all goes well and you leave with something positive. I started this idea out of frustration, and my goal is to help prevent some frustration for you all.

I created a brand called A BetterLife Co., and I hope it can help us take back our time.

I don’t think I’m alone when I say there’s too much out there I want to do and not enough time in a day to do it. How many times have we all said/heard: “Ah! That sounds great, but I just don’t have the time.”

For the most part, that’s just what we say to avoid committing to an event or something else we don’t want to do (or maybe that’s just me…? hehe, sorry friends!). But there are also times where we genuinely mean it. I’m sure there’s a hobby, a few private routines, or even a get-together we’d love to frequent more but truly don’t know how we could budget our time to fit it in. Even something as simple as a daily 10 minute meditation session might be a nightmare to think about taking up. Our days are so jam-packed we struggle to find the “me time” for things we know we’d be better off doing.

I just graduated college and ever since I’ve struggled with deciding what I want to do. I was blessed to find a job that allows me enough free time outside of work to explore but that free time also exacerbated the fact this position wasn’t what would fulfill me the most.

So on the side, I’ve tinkered with creating businesses, producing music, cooking, and even just sleeping more (lol). Throughout the exploring, however, none of these endeavors stuck. Instead, I’ve got a bunch of super fun ideas that ended up as halfway-finished relics.

Once I realized how much time something like making a song would take, I’d jump over to something new and chalk up the quitting of music production to just not being for me. In hindsight, I felt I couldn’t give it the time it deserved and in the moment I also felt I was quitting. Double bummer.

I’ve never considered myself to be someone who doesn’t finish things and so this whole thing has really irked me. It especially bummed me out when I realized that right now I may have the most free time after work I’ll ever have before retirement and yet I can’t seem to implement anything that benefits or excites me. No kids, no pets, and my partner’s been working evenings. If I couldn’t get something going now, when the heck would I ever be able to??

It really wasn’t a new cycle, as I’ve struggled with the plague of incompletion most of my life, but now that I had more free time I felt I was out of excuses to justify it. The idea that “you’ll make time for the things that are most important to you” left me in shambles. At some point, I was really excited about all of these things I tried doing but since I couldn’t stick with any of them I had it in my head I must not care as much as I thought I did. I felt totally incongruent with my values, and lost. I just didn’t have enough time in my day to do enough, and do it consistently.

This idea that we can’t do something because of a lack of time is justified to me though (I guess even in my case haha, working to be nicer to me!). We don’t have enough time in our days because we know we don’t have enough time in our days. Not that we think we don’t, it’s that we know we don’t. I mean, we have to work, we try to eat healthy while saving money, we’ve got any extracurriculars we can fit in after getting enough sleep, the list goes on and on. I’m not here to disagree. I’m here to highlight a different way of looking at it.

I must say, as much as I think we’re justified in saying we can’t make time for this or that, I do think we all could be more efficient with our time. Procrastination, distraction, leisure, oversleeping, the list goes on and on. We can definitely be better about these things butttt who wants to do that every single day? That’s hard. There’s enough hard in our lives. Exciting hobbies we want to start shouldn’t be on that list. Plus, sometimes I just want to take a nice long nap on the weekend or binge-watch TV even while homework is still due.

I think there’s a way to allow us to do it all though, nap included. We just need to start small and be patient with ourselves.

I see our approach to adding new routines, hobbies, or even mindset shifts into our lives as the problem here. With myself being one of the greatest to ever do it, we all bite off more than we can chew. But what the true issue is, is that we aren’t equipped with enough tools to help us actually start chewing once we’ve taken a bite.

I’d rather not suppress my curiosity just because my daily routine can’t handle everything I want to do and accomplish. We PREACH to everyone that no one should ever settle, yet if we decide to bite off a little bit less because of our daily situation I feel that equates to settling in some way. A BetterLife aims to provide some tips, “hacks”, and other methods that allow for the implementation of things we want to do into our lives without disrupting what we currently have going on. If we are going to bite it all off, maybe we can at least have some silverware to help us start chompin’, ya know?

I don’t want anyone to settle in life. Not in anything. And I think one of the biggest reasons we do is because we are aware we can’t do it all and so we don’t even try.

If I can provide an idea that helps just one person gain back 10 minutes of their day? I’d consider this a success. I want to problem solve, and I think I can do it. Here’s to hoping you all follow along as I try.

In the coming days, weeks, months, and years, I want to learn with you. I might be the one posting, but in no way do I expect every single thing I say to work for everyone. Instead, I hope the comment section can become a community in a way. A place to share what worked, and what didn’t.

I’m hoping that, together, (here comes the cheesy part haha) we can build a BetterLife.

I write a biweekly newsletter on exactly this — practical systems for taking back your time. Subscribe free at abetterlifeco.com.