How to live well and make the most of your time? Take this simple test

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"Make haste to live well, and consider that each day alone is a life." — Seneca

The Roman philosopher Seneca reminds us that we must be careful daily to care for ourselves and our lives. It is the quality of our experiences that is to be sought, and not necessarily to achieve something exceptional, but to begin, above all, to be present. It is, in fact, the value we give to our daily life that gives it meaning.

How to live well with your time?

We live on automatic pilot, are not present but lost in our thoughts, in our constraints, obeying all our obligations of our daily life.

The quality of your life depends both on what you do during the eighty or so years of its duration and especially on what you are aware of.

So what does living well mean?

To try to answer this question, take a step back, look at yourself, know the constraints and strengths of your life, and look at the limits placed on your actions.

"What are my obligations? Did I choose them, and at the same time, do I realize what those constraints are?"

To answer this, take a simple test 

List all activities of your day: getting up, breakfast, rituals, and coffee. Then getting ready, grooming, dressing, the kids... Next, your commute, work, meetings, appointments, etc. Finally, back home, preparing dinner, homework, evening, and bedtime. 

Once you have your list, ask yourself for each activity: "does it give me energy or drain me."

Then for those activities that "drain my energy," ask yourself: "how can I lighten them, improve them, make them less burdensome?"

You can, for example, try to choose or prioritize as much as possible the activities that make you feel good or the tasks that make you feel in control of your life.

This way, the feeling of control can be as simple as deciding to tidy a closet or do some paperwork that you have been putting off. The fact that you decide to do it when you do it gives you the impression of control or internal locus, that is to say, that you feel you have the choice to do it or not, which changes everything.

The Hungarian psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihaly has made happiness, creativity, and subjective well-being one of his subjects of study. In his book Flow, he teaches us about the optimal experience, or flow activity, which allows us to be motivated and feel great satisfaction. To gather the conditions for a positive experience, you need a clear goal, immediate feedback, and capabilities relevant to what you are being led to do.

In another of his books, Finding Flow, he explains the link between our psychic energy and time. The distribution of this time in your life in a day is done according to 3 activities: work or productive time, care, and leisure.

Productive activities are work or studies; care activities are housework, cooking, cleaning, shopping, eating, hygiene, dressing, and transportation. Our leisure activities include media (television, reading, newspapers, radio), entertainment (sports, movies, restaurants), social interaction, meeting friends, resting, and wandering.

You can only do one thing at a time, as your brain can only process so much information at once. And it is the quality of your attention that determines the way you deal with events, i.e. the amount of mental energy available.

The more focused you are on what you are doing, the better the experience, but if you are not focused, you miss out on your life.

Throughout history, there has been a great similarity between what we do and the time we spend doing it. Thus, man - from homo sapiens to modern man - has always divided these 3 types of activities. As we are subject to cycles of life, work, leisure, and social interactions, we are subject to the different biological rhythms of our bodies that we must learn to know. Just as we must also know the times of leisure, work, and care which are activities carried out when we are awake, that is to say during the day.

If we choose these activities, we will have a better sense of control over our existence. 

It is not so much what you live as how you live it that is essential... Learning to take care of yourself is the first step.