What is it? And how do we create an excellent life?
Here is one attempt to look at it from this very practical point of view.
For this, we define ‘Life’ as what we experience from morning to evening seven days a week.
The requirements of life dictate the activities in a day, and the attention or focus which is a limited resource determines how and where the amount of our daily psychic (mental and emotional) energy is consumed in a day.
Where does our time go?
Give and take a few hours, most of us sleep for 8 hours. What we do (activities), think and feel (our psychic energy) for 16 hours in a day when we are awake and conscious determines the quality of our life. And actually, the quality of sleep in the night as well. 😉
Our energies are majorly used in 3 types of activities that we do during the day. Also, we are social animals and we interact with people around this, this aspect is spread across these activities and not being called out separately but they do play a significant role in giving us the experience of that activity.
Productive activities: Working at work; Talking, eating, day-dreaming while at work
Maintenance activities: Housework (cooking, cleaning, shopping); eating, grooming (washing up, dressing); driving, transportation
Leisure activities: Browsing (TV and mobile); learning, hobbies, sports; movies, restaurants, talking, socializing; idling, resting
The first and largest includes what we must do in order to generate energy for survival and comfort. Nowadays this is almost synonymous with “making money” since money has become the medium of exchange for most things.
We need the energy to preserve the body and its possessions. These form the maintenance activities
Time left over from productive and maintenance necessities is our leisure time. We use this time to either relax – not using our skills/competencies or learn to build our skills/competencies which in turn helps us in our productive activities
So now for you…
[give % of your awake time to activity and score (1 to 5) in quality of experience]
How much time are you are spending on Productive activities? How is your experience?
How much time you are spending on Maintenance activities? How is the experience?
How much time you are spending on Leisure – relax activities? How is the experience?
How much time you are spending on Leisure – learning activities? How is the experience?
Is there an opportunity for you to relook into how you want to spend your time?
Is there an opportunity for you to better the experience of any activity?
It is in these parameters that life unfolds and it is how you approach it, will determine whether the sum of all our days adds up to a work of art or it is a formless blur.
Reflect and make the right choice for your life. For your quality of life.