The more often you decline invitations to spend time with friends or family because you are too busy with either work or other activities, the more you should realize that your life is not in balance.โ -Byron Pulsifer
Hello Everyone, it's my first time joining a prompt in this community, and I would love to share my tips for maintaining balance in my life.
Having loads of activities to do and meeting up deadlines can be overwhelming, to that end, may I introduce myself to you?
I am Amara, popularly known as Amie by family and friends. I am a fashion designer who has loads of deadlines to meet, talking about making outfits, sourcing fabrics, creating my fashion content (managing my social media handles to keep up with online clients) delivering outfits (in some cases), and even teaching people how to sew.
Asides from that, I am a daughter (the last) with so many house chores at home, I write here on Hive and my personal blog and also study online and I have my own life to live too. Now that is overwhelming, right?
Striking the Perfect Balance in Your Busy World
In addition to your involvement with Hive, you have various other commitments like school, work, and family. How do you handle School, Work, and Family? How do you plan to balance your engagement on Hive with these other responsibilities? Hive demands time and attention, yet there are equally important matters that require your attention as well. Therefore, how do you intend to find a balance among them all?
The most effective tools that have helped me strike a balance in my life are self-awareness, discipline, and drafting a to-do list.
Self-awareness has helped me understand that, as a human I have limits to what I can do at once, and drafting a schedule has helped me say focus on the activities I can do and choose which come before the others.
Right from childhood, I've been trained to be up from bed by 4:30 am, that's because my parents were civil servants whose offices were quite far from home and so to beat the traffic, they must be up as early as possible.
That has helped me cultivate discipline and today, it's so effective. As soon as I'm up from bed, after saying my morning prayers and having little time for my daily reflections, I begin to draft out my plan for the day.
On my to-do list, I ensured each activity have scheduled, funny right? But that is how I keep up.
I've made plans over the night on what to cook for the next day, ao I head up to the kitchen to fix the family something to eat, while at it I could be doing the dishes and sweeping the house, well that's how women were built, I guess we came with super powers to multi -task๐.
I am a dreemer on dreemport which means curating quality content is part of what I do every day, so I head up to the site, read five posts each day, and curate.
By now, it's almost 6 am or 7 am, this is when I draft out what to write, which contest to attempt, and which community to post in,
For instance: I use my Mondays for the #needleworkmonday community and #zapficmonday for the #freewriter community.
Tuesdays are for the music community #ttt, Wednesdays for the picture prompt on the #freewriter community and Poem for the #blockpoetcommunity, Thursdays #Inkwellcommunity where I share my fiction and non-fictitious stories and so do other days of the week have their own communities, and for every community I post on, I ensure I engage in that community which has helped me reduce my anxiety of thinking on what to post for each day.
This has helped my feed to be organized and helped my mind too to be organized, so if it's Monday, I know which community to face.
Ever since I made this plan which officially commenced at the beginning of the year and was part of my goals, I have been active and consistent on the blockchain., if you doubt? You can take a sneak peek at my blog feeds. ๐๐ That's for keeping up on Hive which I have dedicated about 3 hours each day.
Keeping Up With The Real Life.
Being a Fashion Designer and a Tutor I ensure I make plans on what to do for each day.
So after writing on Hive in the morning, it's time to face real life.
I use my Mondays for cutting fabrics given to me by my customers and other days to sew them except Fridays which are used for sourcing fabrics at the market and I probably could source for my personal items as well, More like using one stone to kill two birds.๐๐.
I study online thrice a week, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, because one must never be satisfied with any knowledge gained, every day we live we learn, so I look for ways to improve the skills that I dish out to others.
Over the weekends (Saturdays), I take shots of my handiwork and ask my clients to send me pictures of the outfit I've made for them and then I post them on my social media handles and engage on it too to get more online clients.
My Social Life
I never fail to reach out to my loved ones who don't live with me, I ensure I drop a message on their WhatsApp inbox to check up on them every evening, we chat for a little and then I hurry back to Hive to reply comments, and engage with other members as much as I can before going to bed and sometimes we face time and laugh unapologetically.
Music is the food to my soul, so I make sure to listen to music while working which helps me remain relaxed and engage with what I love to do like drawing and painting at my leisure.
During public holidays I make plans to visit tourist attractions which I've not visited before just to unwind.
I visit friends over the weekend and never fail to reward myself with Netflix and Chill over the weekend and good food made by me.
All images used are mine.