How to Be Intentional with Your Time

Have you ever felt like you don’t have enough time in the day? That’s okay because like you, many other people face this struggle, like myself. The reason we feel this way is because we are often unintentional with our time.

Going through the same routine of work, school, and home can become mundane and too comfortable when we don’t set priorities. Today, I’ll be discussing ways you can set yourself up to lead a more passionate life.

My personal experience with intentionality

Ever since deployment began, I have become more and more intentional with my time. I started out by simply going to work and then editing YouTube videos once I got off.

Two months in, I showed up to the gym everyday after work and cut down on watching movies. Three months in, I fell into a videogame addiction and played with my boys for about 7 hours a day. Yikes. I had cut back on gym time and dedicated it towards Madden and Super Smash Bros.

Now five months in, I go to work, hit the gym, read, write, and immerse myself in entertainment. The journey it took for me to find balance took a bit of time.

This comes with adjusting to a different lifestyle. We hear it all the time, find “balance”. It takes time, open-mindedness, trial & error, but once you find your fix you’ll make it work. The best first step is to write down what is most important to you and then prioritize.

How I became more intentional with my time

As I found out the main aspects of my life, I was able to choose what was most important to me. Everything gets easier once you know exactly what you want to get out of life. Gary Vaynerchuk speaks on self-awareness, a trait I highly recommend learning.

Areas of life that mean the most to me right now include:

• Pride in my work
• Mental Health
• Physical Health
• Social Circles
• Learning new things
• Creating Content
• Entertainment

As long as each of the seven aspects is tended to each day, I can confidently say that it was a successful day. I will now get into each aspect I value highly and elaborate.

1. Pride in my work

The reason I begin with work is that I am deployed for a reason. The reason is to get a job done. If I am going to serve my country, I want to do it with pride and I want to do it well.

As long as I can say that I am happy with my work, I can satisfy my need to be useful, to be an asset to my team.

2. Mental Health

My mental health has to do with me self-diagnosing what I am feeling and figuring out why I feel that way.

A good example is when I got into a rut of not creating content, over-eating, and skipping the gym. To get my mental health straightened out, I adjusted my bedtime and cut out smoking my vape. Ever since, I have been more in control of my life.

To value mental health also means to value self-awareness because it takes a self aware person to understand the causes and effects that affect them.

3. Physical Health

One can tell a lot about a person based on their physical health. Quality physical health illustrates that the individual has their priorities straight in that they take care of themselves. This is not to say that someone who appears unfit should be dismissed.

Rather that physical health is a key indicator about where their headspace is. What I mean is that physical health and mental health go hand in hand. A quality mental state leads to a quality physical state most of the time.

The saying “look good, feel good, play good” can be applied in sports as well as in the game of life.

4. Social Circles

On Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, there is a section that focuses on a human’s need to feel accepted and that they belong. The acronym team stands for “together everyone achieves more”. This quote is true because we all need friends and family who support our dreams and help us out when nothing seems to go right.

My social circles on deployment have helped me overcome the loss of a dog and a friend back at home as well as motivate me to try new workouts at the gym. Having a quality social circle allows me to keep an open mind because there is so much knowledge to be shared with one another that it is impossible to assume you know everything. Once you find your social circle, your world opens up.

5. Learning new things

Learning activates a part in the brain that emits positive effects on the body which can brighten up one’s entire world. It’s funny, I have never been a huge fan of school, but I love to learn. On my deployment, I have learned a little Arabic, some new workouts, and how to handle my money better.

It is incredibly rewarding to try something you are clueless about, fail at first, and then achieve. The journey is awesome.

In an environment like a deployment, it is easy to stagnate and stay in your own lane, but it is more exciting to expand your horizons and learn through other people, reading, and YouTube videos. I will always be on the lookout to learn something new.

6. Creating content

Since I am a young entrepreneur with a creative mindset, I have to find ways to create content and distribute it in order to feel a sense of fulfillment. Ways I have discovered I can share my knowledge and creativity with the world have been through Medium, YouTube, Instagram, and Snapchat. Writing articles is relaxing because it helps me create a sense of things all while helping those who read. Vlogging allows me to get in front of the camera and send a personal experience to the person on the other side.

Sharing media on Instagram and Snapchat allows me to condensed pictures and videos into micro-content that most likely came from the macro-content I have on YouTube and Medium. Creating excites me and allows me to scratch the itch of sharing with the world.

7. Entertainment

Lastly, I value entertainment in order to have a fulfilling life. Back home, traveling to new places and attending music festivals were my go-to forms of entertainment.

Final Thought

Since being deployed, I have distressed through the use of entertainment by watching movies, utilizing YouTube, playing video games, and playing music. There are infinite forms of entertainment available and as long as you can find a few that make you smile, you’ll be all set.

The big takeaway is to be intentional with your time because each day is not guaranteed. We have already seen this so far with the passing of Kobe Bryant as well as the viral Coronavirus.

There is a lot in our control. More than we think. It is up to us to understand what we value our time with the most and do just that.