When we are not pleased with our lives, the easiest way to justify it is to complain about environment and blame every external things. It might be true that some external effect prevents us to make it better then you need to change it.
First of all, look at yourself.
internet
It is usually easy to live without thinking about ourselves. That’s the trick of our brain. It wants us to spend as less energy as possible to survive, that’s why keep us away from every thinking process. However, this is not real world. We have many other influences around. Those all changes our mood and our life. It limits us and set boundaries. To get out of this limit,
we need to go for extra mile
You can say easily say that you are glad with myself and why should you change?
Maybe it will be rude, but I can answer this as
‘The happiest people on earth are the most ignorant ones.’ because you don’t give any effort for living, no effort for life. Everything is coincidence for you; your existence, your identity, your daily routines.
This means that you have no free will at all. You have zero control on your life. This is enough to survive but what differentiates us from animals, is our brain. It is better to use it instead of acting like plant or animal. If not, it is even worse. You are not different than just simple item at home. If ancient people didn’t leave their caves and where they live, we would probably extinct due to hunger or famine or luck of technology. Unlike you think, world is running fast. You can be steady but everybody/thing else is developing and changing. Even though you think that you don’t change, everything you read, you see, you hear is changing you. We aim to make it with own will.
Therefore, the reason of change is to take control of your life. Then you can decide what to do with it.
Change
Start change from yourself.
In my case, there were three major things to change.
Time management, opportunity cost and influence area. These three were the most important for me and I think every people should give importance.
Time Management
When I think about myself, I saw that my main problem and complains are about time. There are many things to do, many plans but very limited time. 24 hours per day was never enough. (here you can find some tips for better planning of time)
When I realize that, I have decided to track my daily actions and the result was amazing. I spent big amount of time without doing anything. Why?
Because I don’t know what to do in day.
To reduce this time, there are plenty of method but what I do use writing down a daily plan. Every morning or before sleep, I consider the day.
What should I do? What are the obligations? Then I write all down, prioritize the list. Sometimes I see that many thing makes my mind busy are just nothing and not even necessary. So, I filter them and I know what are the tasks that day. In this way, I can say that my mind get so much relax because I stopped worrying about tasks until their time come. Besides, I could only focus on that and stopped multitasking. This has increased my efficiency and motivation as well as quality of work.
Another benefit of this writing method is, you know what you are doing. You have complete control of your life. For examples, sometimes you meet with friend and you assign 1 hour for that, however, the conversation went well and you sat there for 4 hours and also got drunk. This often happens. If you don’t know your plans, you day is completely ruined but if you already write down what are your tasks. Even If you have to assign it another time, soon or later it will be done.
I also make an evaluation on Fridays.
Why Fridays?
It is last day of week and you tend to be lazy. Therefore, it is best time to plan your weekend and to see what you have done on week and what you couldn’t. This gives you good feedback if you are overwhelming or not. You can see what you can manage, how much you can do and whether if you have time for another activities you want. After that you can push some of them maybe on weekend or you can delete it from your list because it is not so vital and no time for it.
At the same sense, it is important to plan the weekend. We usually excuse that we are tired and waste two huge days with low efficiency. However, if you plan, you can see that there are a lot of time and a lot to do. You can plan your social activities, hobbies, shopping, travels or whatever. If it is planned, you can see that there is time for everything. Therefore, it is important to wake up early at the weekends. You can finish many tasks until afternoon and then you can be completely free.
For example, instead of spending hours on social media or looking for what to watch on Netflix, you can use that time much better. Then you will see, when you have certain time for Netflix, you can choose series or movie much faster and still have time for other things to do.
At first this can be hard but in time, you will definitely see that your plans are more optimum and it gives you a lot of free time.
You may hear this a lot or never heard before. Opportunity cost is one of the most important thing to know but most of us prefer to skip it. That is basically what you give up to do something. Let’s tell this with the same example. You will meet your friend at a bar and you will stay just for an hour. After bar, your plan is to call your family, cleaning the house, visit another friend or work a bit, practicing some skill or go to shopping.
After all these plans, you sat with friend for 3 hours. Actually you prefer to sit there over other plans. By purpose or not. That means that you gave up all other plans. Those plans are the COST to you. By sitting there 2 more hours, you postpone all your plans which means all your other plans in another days are also postponed. Perhaps, you won’t have time for those plans again.
Another example, you have a family and living in rent. You want to increase your comfort and get credit to buy house and car. You will pay it back for next 10 years. This can sound pretty normal if you don’t think about opportunity cost. Otherwise, you have to accept that by buying apartment and house, you give up your future travels, your luxury expenses, most of the cultural events, hobbies, even your kids’ expenses. Perhaps, your unnecessary expenses will force you to send your kids in worse school or low quality stuff.
It is always better to think what you give up. If your desire to buy a car causes to give up your hobbies, going out time; it means opportunity cost is high.
Never forget that time is only think you cannot buy. As you shouldn’t waste it as we talked before, it is also important to make correct decisions.
Since I am aware of opportunity cost, it helped me organize my life better. Both about time and about my budget.
Influence Area
Everybody is responsible with their selves but this is not always true in daily practice. We have many other responsibilities like work, studies, homework, friends, family, pet and so on. On the other hand, we cannot change and influence everything. There are also things which are not under our responsibility and those we cannot change. This is important to understand.
If you have problems, think about them. State the problem and find solutions.
If you don’t have problems, you can think how you can make your life better, make yourselves more satisfied, to discover yourselves and see your capabilities.
The only way to do this is to define your responsibilities and prioritize them correctly. You shouldn’t waste your time with things you cannot change.
If something is not very important for you to do, then don’t do it. Or do it immediately. If something is not under your responsibility, don’t think of it. Draw your boundaries.
For example, we are all responsible to our families, kids or boyfriends/girlfriends. This is a must and if you see it as a must, just focus on that. This is also opportunity cost problem. If you want to buy a present to your girlfriend but also have something you want for yourself. You should consider that the thing you want to buy yourself is not only the price you pay, also your girlfriend’s happiness, the time you spend together. So, you are the one consider which makes more sense for you.
Back to responsibilities, we are on the age that we get so many information about many things. Social media is the same. We cannot change our lives by envying others on Instagram. We cannot change their life as well by pitying others. When you see a sad news and you think of it for days, this makes no sense and no benefit for you. You cannot change anything. Even if you lose someone you love, getting sad and depressed for days, weeks is not beneficial at all. It is just waste of time.
You cannot save the world, you cannot do everything at a time, you cannot make everyone happy, you cannot help all over.
You just cannot.
Only think you can do is what you can do for yourself. Only thing you can really change is your own habits and responsibilities. So, know your boundaries. Forget the rest. When you achieve this really. You will see, all you complain about will change with your mind and you will get best result.
Just try to live simple.
Originally published at https://bahadirhancicek.medium.com on March 7, 2020.
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