How to Have More Time to Do What You Want

We often complain that we don't have enough time to do what we want and dream about, but then we see a friend who seems to have all the time in the world and is living their best life.

Your friend probably isn't an alchemist brewing extra time in their basement. They are regular people working with the same 24-hour constraint every day.

What are they doing better?

In this article, I'll discuss how I've been finding time to do what I want, and how you can do the same, even if you feel you can't possibly squeeze a minute out of your busy schedule.

Let's begin with the reality that:

We can't make more time

Whenever I think of mortality and the limits of our time on this planet, I am reminded of Oliver Burkemann's 4000-week framework.

Considering the average human lifespan of 80 years, we each get around 4,000 weeks (4,160 weeks, to be precise) to live on this planet, make our mark and enjoy our lives.

This is an optimistic projection since the Grim Reaper can arrive at our doorsteps earlier than expected. Or even later than our 80th birthday, if the Reaper waits for Uber's surge pricing to come down to book a ride. I don't know the Reaper's habits. We're not friends.

But you get the gist. Although the 4,000-week mark is not fixed, it's a good average value we can work with.

This is a powerful realisation because we often see our time as ever-renewing.

We wake up, embark on our daily routines, go on about having our days, retire to bed at night, and then start over the next day.

This is where the illusion of an unlimited time develops.

At midnight, we receive a fresh batch of 24 hours credited to our life account, and we feel like this arrangement will continue forever.

As a result, we're often more liberal with our time than other assets, handing our hours and days to others, like free samples at the supermarket.

Let's project this 4000-week theory into a visual grid to sense the gravity of the situation.

The grid below is interactive, so enter your age and see the grid react:

Each dot on the grid represents one week of your life, and every lightly shaded dot indicates the number of weeks you have already spent. They are gone, and unfortunately, this is a battery you can't recharge.

This visualisation is both shocking and hopeful.

Depending on your current stage in life, you might see the upper portion of the grid, the lightly-shaded portion, and realise so many of your years have gone by, and you have spent only a minor fraction of that time on yourself, towards your dreams, goals and self-growth.

Then, when you see the lower portion of the grid, the weeks and years you still have left, you might feel hopeful that there is still time left to act.

I'm 32 years old now, and this is how the grid looks for me: