Cutline Collective Co-founder, Nefeli on Why We Should Be Proud of What We Achieve in a Single Day

Every one is busy. If one isn’t busy, one tries to be busy. If you’re not busy and are an everyday human living as part of this society then you must, absolutely try your best to be as busy as possible. Simply, because busy means work and work means money and money means survival.

Nonetheless, there reaches a point where survival of the mind and calmness of spirit are pushed aside for the sake of the necessary everyday circle.

We speak of quality of life, relaxation, taking time for yourself but mostly, planning our productivity in such a way so as to be both active and useful in the outmost to our everyday tasks, whilst spending time with our loved ones, spending some personal time, taking the time to take care of ourselves.

Yet how many things does actually one person try to fit in a day; an urban-living person at least.

I took this into a breakdown and trying to rationalise it, through organising it, found it immense. What’s even more interesting is that the same ‘schedule’ one would consider immense, another more pro-active mind or spirit would find it a piece of pie!

But anyway, so there are 24 hours in a day. 8 are taken away from healthy (though some may argue on this) sleeping. That leaves us with 16 hours in a day. 8 hours are usually taken for work. That leaves us with 8. About 2 hours a day are taken into cooking and eating, if one takes care of their dietary needs properly. If one lives near their work then the best case scenario is they would spend around 1.5 hours to commute to and from work. So with 4.5 hours left in a day one needs to squeeze in exercising, lets say for an hour, that leaves 3.5 and personal hygiene, which should only take about half an hour, on a good hair day!

So in these 3 hours, one will attempt to spend time caring  for loved ones, household needs (like grocery shopping and cleaning), socialising, brushing up with the news, some hobbies and a bit of lying around time.

Very busy creatures indeed we are.

Then why do most of us talk of so many regrets, so much time wasted, so many projects left unfinished.

Shouldn’t we take a step back and realise how much we actually do squeeze into a day and give ourselves some credit?

A lot of us have turned to meditation to ease our brains and raise our productivity levels whereas others have turned to mind-fuzzing habits like video games and TV to avoid the reality of daily routines and fill those remaining hours.

I say we should pat our own back and feel pleased about what we actually accomplish.

Maybe we’ll get to smile a bit more, sleep a bit better and feel a bit more fulfilled.

That was my thought after a full 9-hour day of fighting with a project, only to realise that I can’t do it at the end… Some things, we just can’t do.

But I tried.

Words: Nefeli Sidiropoulou