finding recreational time

[Tom.9]

I have some difficulties to find REAL recreational time for myself.

For now, I work often as long as I feel energetic enough.
I do the things with hard due dates, but after that I often don´t have the energy to do things from my @-lists.

At the moment, I don´t have the possibility to delegate work or reduce the hard due dates.
This leads to growing @-lists, less recreation and so on.

Does anyone has some advice?

[TesTeq]

Does anyone has some advice?

Slow down while YOU can. Say NO more often. Focus!

If you will not consciously slow down yourself you will be slowed down by your physical and mental health - sooner or later.

I know something about it...

[bhaveman]

I have some difficulties to find REAL recreational time for myself.

At the moment, I don´t have the possibility to delegate work or reduce the hard due dates.
This leads to growing @-lists, less recreation and so on.

Does anyone has some advice?

Sound like you need to get to the higher levels (30.000/40.000/50.000) and define what is realy important for you.

[dschaffner]

In addition to the other suggestions, you may want to prune your @lists dumping stuff or sending to someday/maybe.

[Tom.9]

Thanks so far.

Does anyone block some time on the weekly review for recreation?
(I heard that once and didn´t succeed at implementing that so far.)

[pxt]

I recommend reading The Now Habit by Neil Fiore, which was recommended by someone on these forums.

Although it's about procrastination, part of his approach includes deliberately scheduling in 'guilt-free play' into a structured day, then filling the spaces with work. I have been trying it out and am putting more quality time into my projects while feeling a lot more 're-created' by my recreation time.

It's a small book and an easy read, chapter 6 being the heart of it.

[TesTeq]

Does anyone block some time on the weekly review for recreation?

Recreation is part of my weekly and daily schedule. This time is already blocked! By definition!

[JohnV474]

OP,

One question to answer during the course of your search is "am I trying to do more than I can?"

David Allen said that many of us are committed to far more than we to take full responsibility for. In many cases, we are simply committed to more than CAN be done (i.e. if we want to do all work to our standards and also have the rest of our life look how we want it to be).

In many cases, what GTD will allow is for us to do LESS work, but that work is better quality and more valuable than the sum of our previous efforts. In my case, a large part of this was realizing the huge cost of new commitments and turning down any of them that didn't fit my Hedgehog concept (Jim Collins), Elimination plan (Tim Ferriss) or 20k-50k views (David Allen).

HTH.

[Tom.9]

Slow down while YOU can. Say NO more often. Focus!


I feel if I say "no", this would increase my backlog (not purging, but creating new piles of papers etc.).

[TesTeq]

I feel if I say "no", this would increase my backlog (not purging, but creating new piles of papers etc.).

I mean say NO to the sources of backlog. Papers have their purpose - you've invited them by saying YES in the past.