Making Time

A friend of mine once told me, and I’m paraphrasing here, “You can’t find time. You have to make time.” It was a bit of a blow to my ego when he said that, because I was mulling over something and giving excuses as to why I couldn’t do it, ending the whole thing is “tengoklah dulu, if I find the time.” It was certainly a sentap moment for me, but a welcome one.

We’re all given equal amounts of time. As a picture on the internet said, “Even Beyoncé gets only 24 hours a day”. It’s what you choose to do with that time that matters, that separates mere mortals to Queen Bee.

It’s rather easy to manage time when you only have one preoccupation. Let’s say that it’s writing. If you only care about writing, then all your free time should automatically go to writing. Anytime you find yourself on the verge of boredom, you write. Every time you find yourself asking “nak bust spa taktaw?” you write. No other option, so the decision becomes easy.

However, it becomes more and more challenging the more things you decide to put on your plate. You add “hanging out with friends” to your priority list and the time you can spend on writing will most definitely take a hit. Add in “make songs every week” into the mix, and your time for all three preoccupations shrink, because there’s nowhere to add time in between those 24 hours.

In order to make that time, you have to steal from something else on your list of things you need to do. You may need to take time away from sleeping in order to fit in your writing. You may need to do away with watching television in order to get in that time to make those songs. It’s a matter of getting yourself organised, and sticking to what you’ve set for yourself.

In the end, you have to ask yourself what you really want to do. And that will be reflected by the things that you actually undertake. If you spend a lot of time sleeping, then you really want to sleep. No matter what you say orally, your actions are what matters and are your true answers.

What do you really want to do, Anwar?