Talking point: Does your life leave you enough time to relax?

This week's talking point, Does your life leave you enough time to relax?, is taken from The New York Times Learning Network.

In mid February Shannon Doyle compiled a number of questions to jog readers' minds on the topic of today's fast pace of life:

• Imagine your life with more sleep, longer breaks from school/work and all your other obligations, maybe even regular naps.  Do these changes appeal to you? Or does the thought of devoting more time to relaxing fill you with stress and worry?
• How do you balance all the things you need to do in an average day with the need to sleep and rest?
• Do you ever feel like being sleep deprived or less than fully rested causes you to make mistakes, take more time to accomplish tasks or otherwise do less than your best?
• If so, how could you change your routine to allow you to have more downtime?
• If you could take more breaks, would you? How would you spend this time?
• Does the idea of working for 90 minutes then having time to relax before resuming seem familiar to you? Possible? Why or why not?

The topic has brought to mind a lesson we did a long, long time ago on a time management lesson in a Business English course. There was this activity on  The Magic Hour, a concept coined by Roger Black in his book Getting things done. Here's a summary of Mr Black's Magic Hour.

Imagine you have one extra hour every week: your 169th hour. It occurs whenever you want it to, and you can do whatever you want with it. You don’t have to see anyone that you don’t want to see, or write letters to them, or do anything that you’re currently feeling guilty about.

• Write down five things that would make you happy in that hour (don’t give yourself any restrictions or nagging guilt feelings about other jobs to be done).
• Write down five things that would give pleasure to someone else in that hour.
• Finally, write down five important things that you have been putting off, that you could at least start in the hour.

Then consider: If you could have last week all over again, where could you fit in the magic hour? Resolve to fit it into this week at the same point. If you find that simply the process of deciding to do this makes you feel good, you probably are not making enough decisions of this nature. Make the magic hour a weekly habit.

Mull over these ideas before getting together with the members of your conversation group. For background information, you can also read Tony Schwartz's article for The New York Times Relax! You'll be more productive.

photo by Lukey Dargons in Flickr