Do you feel like you’re always chasing time? Nothing very surprising. Our society favors this accelerated tempo: you have to be everywhere, all the time, and juggle performance and versatility. Gold, “our relationship with time has direct consequences on our quality of life“, recalls Amélie Boukhobza, clinical psychologist. Here are 5 ways to find time again… and savor it fully.
“We have to take ownership of this time and invest it”
“I feel like we’re all chasing time…and more and more“, admits the psychologist. “We almost always have this strange feeling of never having done enough. Even when the days are full. Even when we check off everything.”
So how do you find the time… to take your time? Because the problem, in reality, is obviously not time in itself – but rather our relationship to time.
“Time is an immense continent, in which it is difficult to find our way. It is the only absolute mark of our finitude. It seems inexorable to us, never suspending its flight. The same for everyone. One hour, 60 minutes. One day, 24 hours. One year, 365 days”, underlines the practitioner.
However, there is a solution to this: transforming time into duration. “In other words, subjectify it. Make it your own. Invest it. Make it ours. So he stretches. Or on the contrary, it becomes shorter”, analyzes the psychologist.
Finding time again is (fortunately) possible
If time is getting away from you, good news: there are 5 ways to get some back, to regain control of your days.
Stop confusing speed with efficiency
If going fast every day gives the illusion of “better control“, it is actually a trap. The more you accelerate, the more you saturate. “The brain doesn’t like constant urgency. It puts itself under tension, constantly anticipates, and ends up exhausted. As I often say: the emergency is the firefighters. The rest can wait.” recalls the specialist.
Slow down certain everyday actions
Instead of just having lunch, did you answer emails and do a bit of cleaning at the same time? Big mistake.
“Slowing down certain everyday actions (walking, eating, talking, etc.) does not mean wasting time. It’s recovering it,” affirms the practitioner.
Agree to prioritize
We also forget that not everything deserves the same energy: we spend a lot of time solving micro-problems, responding to everything immediately, doing three things at the same time, making ourselves available for secondary things. But, over time, we get lost.
“Taking back time therefore implies ‘prioritizing’. Not everything is urgent. Not everything is important. And above all, not everything depends on us. There is also this very anchored idea that ‘useful’ time would necessarily be productive time. False”, insists the expert.
The time when we do nothing, where we think, where we dream, where we switch off, is psychologically necessary. “It’s at this moment that things settle down, that the brain reorganizes itself,”
she specifies.
Listen to your limits
There is also all the time wasted fighting against what is already there. Wanting to go faster than your limits, than your fatigue, than your current state.
“If we can’t, we can’t. We don’t fly above traffic jams to arrive on time… At least not yet! And getting angry doesn’t change anything”, recalls Amélie Boukhobza.
The practitioner therefore recommends rather accepting one’s real rhythm, without seeing it as a renunciation. The goal: to stop wasting energy fighting against yourself… or against windmills.
Stop wanting more
Finally, finding time again perhaps also means stopping always wanting more.
“More activities. More objectives. More obligations. Too much gives the illusion of living intensely. It’s exciting, yes… but it steals the feeling of presence. We’re no longer really in the action. But subjective time – that which we feel – lengthens when we inhabit it fully”, underlines the practitioner.
The real work is therefore not finding time: in our overloaded schedules, making time can be difficult. But it is better to stop losing it where it escapes without us realizing it.
“Decide instead to take a chosen amount of time: a massage, a film, a book, a good meal, a song, a walk by the sea… To transform time into duration. And praise slowness”, concludes Amélie Boukhobza.