The most precious asset of our times is …TIME!
How do you manage your time?
What percentage of your day do you dedicate to yourself?

If you are like me, it seems that time is never enough for everything we have to do and in the end of the day, there we go again, free falling on the priority list of to do’s… oh and as soon as we think we were going to have some kind of extra time … we smoothly add another task to fit our schedule, ending up running again to fit everything as planed.

We always think we are Super-women / Super-men, forgetting that even those need to recharge batteries once in a while.

This quarantine messed up our entire daily organisation giving us the false idea that we will now have TIME for ourselves…

We forget that, although saving travel time, we are adding a lot of new tasks that make days fly one after the other, followed by weeks and months and getting to a point where, the two last months, will be nothing but a gigantic blur when we look backwards.

Who else is spending their days like this:

• cleaning the house just to realise that no matter how hard we clean, 15m later it will be dirty again!
• cooking for the whole family, and as soon as everyone finishes eating, thinking… What the h***** am I cooking for supper?
• doing the laundry over and over again and asking yourself “How on earth does so much clothes get dirty if no one has left the house for the last 2 months?”
• going to the supermarket every 3 days and realising that we should have an army at home because food disappears at the speed of light, even if we buy it by the ton.
• Homeschooling, “meaning”: play the teacher, remember everything we swore we forgot, and become best friends with Google!

Where does Meditation, Yoga, reading a book or just keep yourself company or listening to your thoughts, fit in?!?

IT DOESN’T!!!

This has been and keeps on being my daily struggle, but even more during this quarantine. Where did my TIME fly ??

I decided to share some tips to help you recover a bit of your “loss time”. But remember, this is a “work in progress”, so accept that some days will be better than others and mostly, never give up!

• Commit to taking an hour a day for yourself. No excuses!

Don’ t you shower every day? Don’t you eat every day? You can’t spend the day without time for yourself, because if you do, you’ll be unbearable and nobody will put up with you. You have to keep the mental health of the whole family! If not for you, do it for them!

• Plan in advance the day before, and no exceptions!

And always leave 2 hours for unforeseen events such as: going to the pharmacy because someone is sick or being on the phone supporting that friend of yours who is divorcing because of COVID! This will end the excuses and put an end on your do to list dropping.

• Drop the phone 30m before going to sleep.

Instead of drift watching that Netflix series, how about lying in the silence of your bedroom and enjoying the stillness of the house… Listen to your inner voice instead of your boss and colleagues filtered through zoom, or your children shouting over “Panda e os Caricas” on tv loop. 30 priceless minutes that will get you mental focus and make you sleep like a baby!

• Make ear-phones your best friend. 

Make whatever arrangements you need with your husband, mother, maid, eldest son or whatever, and take that time for YOU. Find a hidden corner of the house and put the phones on. They are absolute sound proof! Even if the house is falling down, you just don’t know it and what you don’t know can’t affect you, right ?! And yes, they can all survive without you for an hour, nobody is irreplaceable and if they all get a little traumatised, they won’t die of it (This is my mom’s theory!).

When you do the dishes or clean the house, put your favorite music on the phones. You can’t go out at night but you can dance at home. Anything goes, NOBODY IS WATCHING !!! One dance a day,  keeps the doctor away!!!

So this is it! Day by day, creating routines and valuing your personal TIME! 
Believe me, with 3 children, a husband, 2 cats and a rabbit, I know what I’m talking about, TIME is our most valuable asset.
I’m here for you in this crusade!
Would love to hear about your personal experience and all your tips to add up!!! 
Together we are definitely stronger!!!