The three most difficult things are: keeping a secret; forget an offense; make good use of your free time.
Bruce Lee
Wondering what to do in your free time can lead to several unexpected turns, even if you have little time to devote to your hobbies and passions.
If I asked you now: what are you doing in your spare time?
If your answer is that you watch television, play video games, follow links on Facebook or browse the internet aimlessly, you can rest assured that you can truly do better and more stimulating activities.
In this regard there are two schools of thought, according to which:
- Free time should be taken as it comes when it arrives without premeditating anything
- Free time must be planned and organized as little as necessary to exploit it properly
If you are one of those who think that free time should not be organized, you can skip the next paragraph, otherwise proceed linearly with the reading of the article.
What to do in your free time?
The free time , just like the rest of the time we have, is an important resource that is worth learning how to organize.
First you need to understand what you like to do that you would like to turn into a constant activity to do during your free time.
To understand this, you must pay attention to the constants of your life .
- What do you think you like to do?
- What do people around you think you like to do?
- What did you like to do from an early age?
- Are there any activities that you do for free but that you would pay to do?
- If you were to enter a bookstore, which sectors would you stop in?
- What are the websites you frequent most about?
Write down these questions on paper and then write the answer, after which circle your constant , that is the activity that has emerged in at least 3 answers.
That is probably the activity worth pursuing in your spare time.
If you have written completely different answers to each question, you are probably multipotential and have a greater variety of choices.
If, on the other hand, you have more double answers, consider the activity that you can actually use in your free time.
Or if you couldn’t identify any useful leisure activities, read the article: I’m bored! where I created a list of 100 activities to try.
Now let’s see some tips to use your free time effectively.
What to do in your free time: 12 ideas
As we saw in the previous paragraph, it is useful to spend some time to understand what to do in your free time .
If you haven’t found the right activity for you or you want to get some advice on how to spend your free time , take a look at this list I have prepared.
I have included stimulating activities that can be a valid support for growing as a person.
- Meditate. Meditation offers significant benefits, especially if it is carried out consistently, which makes it a great choice to profitably occupy your free time.
- Engage in outdoor activities. Outdoor activities are great for turning off the television a bit and turning on the brain. No matter what activity you would like to do, the important thing is to get out of the usual mental patterns.
- Read. There is not much to say about reading, I often talk about it in my articles, if you have decided to invest in yourself, reading is a concrete step to become a better person . To get started you can read some useful reflective stories that you can find by clicking here or here .
- Write. If you have a never-started book in your drawer that you would like to complete, the choice seems obvious to me, otherwise you can write a diary or notes on your passion that in the future could turn into a real book.
- Rest. Free time can be optimally occupied by resting and taking care of your body, as we have seen it is also a useful activity to increase self-esteem .
- Play a sport. If you systematically have free time in the same hours and days, you can consider starting a new sport. Maybe what you were passionate about as a child or as I always recommend, a martial art .
- Volunteer. Volunteering is another excellent way to fill your time by helping others and why not to boost your self-confidence a little .
- Invest in your personal growth. If you like the idea of continuous improvement you can read other blog articles, by clicking here you can find the complete archive, maybe you could enjoy it.
- Develop your creativity. Sooner or later, automation will take away all the jobs that don’t require our creativity to make machines and robots do them. Investing a part of your free time to cultivate creativity is not wasted time, especially in view of the near future.
- Go from liabilities to assets. Another interesting idea for your free time is to implement those activities that are normally passive. For example, if you spend a lot of time on video games, you can try developing your own little video game, or you can create guides for a blog. Do you read so many books? Start writing yours. Do you often watch videos and pictures of homemade items? Build something with your own hands; in short, don’t limit yourself to using your free time passively.
- Explore. Visiting new places is often a great activity for both the body and the mind. Obviously it is not necessary to make expensive trips or strenuous transfers, it is often enough to visit the places around us, in the small suburban towns or the neighboring villages: travel, explore, discover.
- Take a course. We all would like to have particular skills, but we repeat that we don’t have time. If you find yourself in this situation, stop procrastinating and start that course you’ve been thinking about for years, whatever it is: sewing, drawing, painting, web design, dancing, singing, acting, coding or horse riding – you just have to choose. If you want to train online, take a look at my courses .
Once you have identified one or more activities you would like to do, you need to choose how much time to dedicate to them.
Holidays and free time
Now let’s talk about the free time we normally dedicate to our holidays.
Most of us have a large part of our holiday time in August, often a week or two, while the lucky ones, the entire month of August.
Others may have holidays in other periods, but the substance does not change: you still have a homogeneous block of days to devote to your rest.
Since holidays can also be part of the free time cauldron, it is important to plan them wisely.
Here are two possibilities:
- The way that most people follow, that is to take a vacation or a very long trip, once a year by accumulating all the holidays
- Or spread your free days throughout the year by planning long weekends
The first solution is certainly the most popular, you get stressed out with work for a whole year and then finally enjoy an average of ten days of vacation.
This solution allows us to engage in longer journeys that can contemplate more distant destinations.
But it brings with it many disadvantages, first of all the obligation to travel during peak periods, in high season.
Furthermore, leaving your job for several days, you end up suffering from the return to work syndrome , or that unpleasant feeling of having to return to old work habits.
The second choice instead involves a completely different approach.
That is to plan with, say 6 months in advance, long weekends diluted throughout the year.
Off-the-beaten-path weekends that help us stay relaxed and reduce the accumulated daily work stress.
This strategy has several advantages :
- We can relax and pamper ourselves on a fixed basis once or twice a month
- You avoid the crowds and the exorbitant high season prices
- We keep ourselves productive at work and in private life
- We can visit many more places
- There is no risk of getting tired on long journeys
- We work more peacefully knowing that small holidays are always around the corner
Obviously there are also the negative aspects that we have seen before: with a few consecutive days you have to partially renounce to visit very distant places.
Finally, there is a third way to plan the free time dedicated to holidays, or the middle way .
You can partially forgo a holiday in the holiday month, perhaps by making it shorter, to include a long weekend, for example every two months.
How to spend your free time?
At this point in the article you should have found your business to do in your free time.
Remember that time is the most important resource we have and above all it is not renewable , so it is worth learning how to make the most of it.
If you want to have your say or share how you use your free time you can use the comments at the bottom of the article.
