You Probably Have an Hour. The Question Is Where It Goes.

Most of us have said some version of the same thing at some point: “I just don’t have the time.”

There’s work, family, children, travelling, shopping, cooking, cleaning, messages to answer and all the other things that gradually fill a normal day. By the time everything has been dealt with, finding an entire hour for yourself can sound unrealistic, yet I think there’s something worth noticing here. We often manage to find an hour when something else takes it from us.

We can watch an episode of something on Netflix, spend an hour scrolling through our phones without really intending to or, more positively, make time to go to the gym. A commute might take an hour. The children might go to bed at eight and we stay awake until eleven. None of this means our lives aren’t busy, it simply suggests that the question may not always be whether an hour exists. Sometimes the more useful question is where it already goes. 

Time Doesn’t Always Arrive Looking Like Free Time

I think one reason we struggle to notice our available time is that we imagine free time as a completely empty part of the day, with nothing happening, nobody needing us and no responsibilities waiting. For many adults, that kind of hour rarely appears, which means the hour we’re looking for may already be hidden somewhere inside our normal routine.

It could be the bus journey home from work, the time after the children have gone to bed or the hour you normally spend watching television before sleeping. It might be thirty minutes in the morning and another thirty later in the day. Some people genuinely have circumstances where even that’s difficult, so I don’t think this needs to become another reason to judge ourselves for being busy. The point is simply to look properly before deciding the time isn’t there.

Your hour might already be somewhere inside:

• Your commute.
• The evening after the children are asleep.
• The time you normally spend scrolling.
• An hour of television you aren’t particularly interested in.
• Two or three smaller gaps spread throughout the day.

Most of us are very good at seeing the time already claimed by responsibilities, yet we’re often less aware of the smaller pieces we give away through habit. That difference matters because time can disappear without us ever consciously deciding where we wanted it to go. 

It’s difficult to notice patterns in your thoughts, emotions and behaviour when every moment of your attention is occupied by the next thing that needs doing.

We Give Our Time Away Without Noticing

A lot of our days operate automatically. We finish work and open our phones, sit down and put something on television or check one message and somehow end up scrolling for forty minutes. None of those things are necessarily bad. Rest matters, entertainment matters and sometimes doing absolutely nothing is exactly what we need.

I think the interesting part is whether we actually chose it. There’s a difference between deciding that you want to spend an hour watching a programme because you enjoy it and reaching the end of an evening wondering where three hours disappeared to. The activity can be exactly the same while the awareness behind it is completely different.

That’s why finding your hour isn’t really about squeezing more productivity into your day. I don’t think every spare moment needs to become useful, because that would probably create another form of pressure. It’s more about becoming aware of where your time goes and whether some of it could belong to you deliberately rather than disappearing automatically. 

Everyone Else Can Gradually Receive the Best of Your Time

Something else happens when life becomes busy: other people and responsibilities usually become the priority. Your employer gets your working hours, your family gets your attention, the house gets maintained, bills get paid, messages get answered and problems get solved. There’s almost always another practical thing that appears more urgent than spending time understanding yourself.

This can continue for years. You can become extremely good at managing everything around you while gradually losing touch with the person managing it, and I think this is one reason people can eventually feel exhausted without being able to point towards one obvious cause. It isn’t necessarily that one responsibility has become unbearable. Sometimes nearly every part of your time has been allocated somewhere else, leaving very little space where nothing is being asked of you.

Even when that space finally appears, we may fill it immediately because sitting quietly with ourselves can feel unfamiliar. We reach for the phone, television, work, food, another task or whatever normally occupies the gap. Finding your hour means deliberately allowing some of that space to remain yours. 

What Would You Actually Do With an Hour?

This is where I think the idea becomes much more interesting than ordinary time management. Imagine you genuinely had one hour today that belonged entirely to you, with nobody needing anything, no work to finish and nowhere you had to be. What would you do with it?

Some days you might genuinely need to rest. Another day you might exercise, read or go for a walk. You might write down what’s been going through your mind lately, think about why something has been bothering you or learn about something you’ve struggled to understand about yourself. You might simply sit somewhere without constantly consuming something.

That hour could be used to:

• Rest without feeling you need to achieve anything.
• Read or learn something you genuinely care about.
• Exercise or go for a walk.
• Think about something that’s been on your mind.
• Write down what you’ve been thinking or feeling.
• Spend some time without constantly consuming something.

There doesn’t need to be a perfect routine because the value of the hour is the space it creates. A lot of self-awareness begins there. It’s difficult to notice patterns in your thoughts, emotions and behaviour when every moment of your attention is occupied by the next thing that needs doing. We often want to understand why we feel stressed, unhappy, anxious, frustrated or lost while rarely creating enough space to properly notice what’s been happening.

Sometimes we need somewhere for those questions to exist before we can begin to understand their answers.

Working on Yourself Doesn’t Always Mean Improving Yourself

There’s another distinction I think is important. If you decide to spend an hour on yourself, it doesn’t immediately need to become another self-improvement project.

You don’t need sixty minutes of meditation followed by journalling, reading, goal setting and a new morning routine, because that can very quickly turn your hour into another job. Understanding yourself may be far simpler.

You might recognise that you’ve been putting pressure on yourself at work because you’re frightened of appearing unsuccessful. You might notice that every evening you’re mentally exhausted because your mind has been occupied all day. You may realise that something you thought was making you happy stopped doing that a long time ago, or notice how often you compare yourself with other people and how rarely you actually ask what you want.

None of those observations automatically solve anything, but they give you something much more useful to begin with: an understanding of what you’re actually working with. From there, any changes you do make have more meaning because you aren’t simply changing things at random.

Your Hour May Affect More Than Your Hour

It can feel selfish to take time away from everything else when so many other things need attention, although I think there’s another way of looking at it. You’re already part of all those other areas of your life.

You’re part of your work life, your relationships and your family, and you’re involved in the decisions around your finances, your health and your future. The person experiencing and managing all of those things is you. If you understand yourself better, you don’t leave that understanding behind when the hour finishes, you take it back into everything else.

Perhaps you begin to understand why certain situations at work affect you so strongly, recognise why the same argument keeps happening in a relationship, notice when you’re reaching your limits earlier or become more aware of some of the pressure you’ve been placing on yourself. You might even recognise why you keep making the same decisions around money, work or relationships.

One hour doesn’t magically fix your life, but it does give you more opportunity to understand the person living it. That understanding can influence far more than sixty minutes.

Find the Hour You Already Have

Before saying you haven’t got an hour, look at where your hours currently go, not critically, just honestly. Look at the evening after the children go to bed, your commute, the time spent scrolling, the television you don’t really care about watching and the small gaps that disappear because something automatically fills them.

You may not find a perfect uninterrupted sixty minutes. Perhaps you find twenty minutes here and forty somewhere else. The exact number isn’t really the important part, because what matters is recognising that some of your time should occasionally belong to you.

Not because every minute needs to be productive, and not because you should constantly be trying to become a better version of yourself. Sometimes the most useful thing you can do is create enough space to understand the version of yourself that’s already there.

You give your time to a lot of things, so it’s worth noticing whether you ever give any of it back to yourself.

FAQ

How can I make time for myself when I’m always busy?

Start by looking at where your existing time already goes rather than trying to create extra hours. Commutes, evenings, television, scrolling and smaller gaps throughout the day may contain time that could occasionally be used more deliberately.

Does time for yourself have to be a full hour?

No. An hour is a useful way of thinking about the idea, but it doesn’t need to be sixty uninterrupted minutes. Twenty minutes in one part of the day and forty somewhere else can create the same opportunity to step away from everything demanding your attention.

What should I do during time for myself?

There isn’t one correct answer. You might rest, exercise, read, walk, think, write or simply spend some time without constantly consuming something. The useful question is what you need from the time rather than what you think you should be doing.

Is spending time on yourself selfish?

I don’t think it has to be. You’re part of your work, relationships, family and every other area you’re trying to manage, so creating some time to understand and look after yourself can influence how you experience and respond to those areas as well.