If you’re like most sports fans, you wish you had more time to engage in your favorite sport-related hobbies. You want to watch more games. You want to have more barbecues and celebratory parties with your friends. You want to play in a league. You want to craft more tokens of your fandom (and potentially sell them for a profit).
Unfortunately, you just don’t have the time.
So how can you make more time in your life for the things you love?
Document Your Responsibilities
Your first step is to document your core responsibilities. What are the biggest priorities in your life and which priorities are totally unmovable? For most people, the number one responsibility is the health and safety of your family. Close behind that is fulfilling the responsibilities of your full-time job. You may also have to manage a rental property, take care of pets, and keep up with your friendships.
Try to figure out how much time these activities really take up and consider whether there’s any way to reduce this time. We’ll explore some options on how to do this later.
Eliminate Time Waste
Most people waste a lot of time each day, often without even knowing they’re wasting it. Eliminate these empty activities, and you’ll have much more time to spend as you desire:
- Unnecessary meetings. How often do you attend meetings that don’t really accomplish anything, but instead just take time out of your day? Figure out a way to avoid them. If you’re in control of such matters, scheduling fewer meetings (and shorter meetings) can help you tremendously.
- Unwanted responsibilities. Some responsibilities aren’t “real” responsibilities. For example, you may have volunteered to do something you no longer find rewarding or fulfilling. Abandon these if you can.
- Social media. Be honest: how much time do you spend aimlessly scrolling through social media feeds? Social media can be a valuable source of information and socialization, but it’s also a major source of time waste.
- Mindless TV. Watching sports or a favorite TV show is fine, but how often do you mindlessly tune out and turn the TV on? Consider these hours carefully and try to find out if there’s a better way for you to spend this time.
- Miscellaneous procrastination. We all procrastinate occasionally. But some forms of chronic procrastination end up wasting an embarrassing amount of time.
This is just a preliminary list; there are many wasteful activities worth eliminating entirely.
Delegate or Hire Someone
If you’re overloaded with responsibilities, you could benefit from delegating or reassigning some of those responsibilities. Can additional partners, employees, or freelancers subsidize your workload? Can you hire a property management company to take care of your properties? Can you call upon your spouse or family members to help you out around the house?
Schedule Hobby Time
Most people have no trouble scheduling important things like doctor’s appointments, even if their schedule is already busy. So why can’t you schedule time for your favorite hobbies?
Obviously, you can’t go overboard with this. You can’t squeeze an hour of football watching into the middle of your workday. But if you make your hobbies more of a priority, you’ll likely find the time to pursue them.
Overlap Activities
Multitasking isn’t very effective, but you may be able to overlap various activities to ensure you can still find time for your hobbies. For example, if you want to spend some quality time with your kids, but you also want to catch up on a big sporting event, why not bond with your kids over the match and teach them about the sport you love? You can also squeeze hobbies into your lunch break at work or tackle them while eating breakfast.
Practice Hobbies in Shorter Chunks
Sometimes, you’ll have to practice your hobbies in shorter chunks or bursts. Instead of trying to find 3 or 4 hours to watch a football game, consider recording it and watching it in 15-minute chunks. It may not be quite as satisfying, but it’s better than not watching it at all.
Take More Breaks
Finally, consider taking more breaks from your core responsibilities. Walk away from work for a while. Take days off. Enjoy yourself. If you’re working hard, you deserve it. And taking breaks to do fun things can also be enormously beneficial in terms of reducing your stress.
You can’t invent more time out of thin air or jam more hours into a day, but you can reevaluate and restructure your life so that you have more flexibility in partaking in your favorite hobbies. Once you get a better sense of time management, it will come more naturally to you, and you’ll have plenty of opportunities to follow your favorite sports.
