50Minutes - Make Time for Yourself: A more relaxed you is a more productive you!

In the past, our ancestors lived according to the rhythm of the seasons and nature. Nowadays, ever since the Industrial Revolution, machines facilitate our manual, household and administrative work. However, our quality of life does not really seem to have improved. Caught in a vicious circle, we no longer have the time to stop to take a breath, or even to live our lives! We feel caught up in an eternal whirlwind, in a world where everything goes too fast.

Consequently, it is more and more difficult for us to catch our breath in a society in which we have to take on more and more demands, information and requests. The media overwhelm us on a daily basis with images, each more depressing than the last. The future does not look promising, with unemployment, violence and environmental problems all on the rise. However, as Marcelle Auclair (French author, 1899-1983) states in Le Livre du bonheur (The Book of Happiness), joy, love and happiness truly do exist. It is up to us to decide whether we want to focus on the misery in the world or, on the contrary, to adopt a positive view of life. However, is it possible that we still do not have all the keys to unlock the door to happiness?

Together, we will look at the way you give yourself time to be in harmony with yourself. We will then analyse the traps which prevent you from correctly dividing up your different responsibilities. Finally, we will look at the idea of enjoyment, which should be a central part of life. However, being able to experience this type of feeling in our daily lives is not as evident as it may seem, since we are so disconnected from the present. In order to achieve this we need time to focus on the essential and on ourselves. We have to give ourselves the position we deserve in our lives. However, if we want to live more freely, the first thing we need to do is to find out how we function.

T IME FOR SOME SELF-EXAMINATION !

Begin by buying a notebook which takes your fancy. Choose the colour, the format and the material, and write Time for myself in big letters on the front cover. Every morning, open it up, grab a pen and get writing! For example, write down how you feel when you wake up: are you happy to get up and looking forward to experiencing new things? Or, on the contrary, do you already feel tired thinking about all the tasks waiting for you?

The Tale of Eve and the Land of Dreams
The city of love, salty-sweet treats, multicoloured masks. Venice really has it all! Eve dreams of taking her boyfriend there. But each time she tries to book the romantic weekend away, something comes up. And so she just keeps putting the dream off for another day.

If you ask Eve why she never gets around to booking her city trip, she will tell you that she never has the time: her best friend would call her mid-crisis, her mum was in the middle of moving or her boss had just given her a new file to work on. She feels she cannot manage her time any more. She feels constantly overwhelmed by what Alec MacKenzie, an American researcher and author of the famous book The Time Trap: The Classic Book on Time Management , likes to call time traps. These time traps are all the elements which slowly chip away at both your professional and private organisation.

W HAT ABOUT YOU ?

Do you have the feeling that you cannot find a minute for yourself? That you are running non-stop to try to get everything done or satisfy your boss, partner or children? At the end of the day, do you sometimes feel empty and drained of energy? When you concentrate on a task, do you often feel that you are bothered all the time?

If you answered yes to these questions, time traps may be preventing you from going about your business. They can damage your concentration, the quality of your work and your satisfaction with yourself.

Alec MacKenzie classifies these distractions into two categories:

• External traps : external elements which disturb what you are doing or your organisation. For example, phones, social media, meetings and business lunches are particularly good examples of this type of trap.
• Internal traps , such as lack of organisation, inability to delegate, perfectionism, bad time management, and so on.

Although external time-wasting factors are easy to detect, internal causes are more insidious. It is therefore important to analyse your behaviour to detect the elements which take up a lot of your day.

I N YOUR NOTEBOOK

To understand how you function, you have to take a long, hard look at yourself. Your notebook is the ideal place to write up what you see.

On a regular basis, draw a table with two columns, putting internal traps on one side and external traps on the other. Write down everything that, in your opinion, makes you lose time. Be honest this is your notebook after all!