The importance of Me-Time: Narinder Jit, Ashok Leyland
Once upon a time, I read somewhere, “Home is the place, where you go in bed with your worst enemy.” I won’t name the enemy, it’s understood. It’s as clear as in the tweets of our Defence Minister on India China standoff or Prime Minister’s speeches without naming China. Anyhow, here I am not ruminating about our relationship with our spouses or our neighbours but about an incidence with my spouse on a specific night. Late at night with both of us lying in the bed, while she was scrolling through her mobile, I asked her to switch off the lights. She gave me a firm no with an added emphasis that It’s her me time. As usual, I didn’t dare to counter her. I love my peace and tranquility rather than getting into an already lost battle. I wanted to sleep for the night, half an hour of inconvenience is better than a whole night’s insomnia.
This so-called me time, gave me wavering thoughts. What exactly is the me time? How can we classify this me time? How essential is me time? Being an auditor, root cause analysis is under the very of roots of my blood and brain.
We go to the office to earn our living. Can we classify the time we spend in the office as me time? Majority of the people will vociferously object to it being called as me time. Except those who are into the profession for their passion rather than in a professional for a living. Most of us are into a profession for living, which might be our own choosing or a forced one. Even if the profession just to earn a living and a forced one, is it still possible to have any me time in it? Definitely yes. But this me time is not the time which you spend having chit chat with colleagues or net surfing or any other nonproductive personal time off to recoup and recover your energies. Here me time would be the time that forces you to stretch, expand your professional horizon or develop new capabilities. It leads to your professional and personal development.
On a similar account, whether time spent with family leisurely or compulsorily, can be classified as me-time? Again, with added emphasis no. It doesn’t mean, one shouldn’t spend time with their family. It’s necessary and very essential of part of your time allocation. But in my opinion, it’s maintenance time. Time, one spends in maintaining anything, whether personal relationship, social relationship or for that matter even job. Importance and priority might differ under each category and any neglect may have a high cost in the long run. One needs to devote this maintenance time, balancing each activity or relationship. Even though certain activities might appear as grind or other especially fulfilling but all these remain as maintenance activities. These help to maintain professional, social and personal fabric.
Third category is time taken for various personal activities. Such as time taken for personal daily routines – brushing teeth, bathing, eating, morning prayers or news or routine professional reading or for that matter time taken for gym or morning or evening walk. One shouldn’t consider it as me time. Again, all this time is maintenance time. Such time is required to maintain yourself in good physical and mental conditions for performance of all your duties, whether professional, social or personal.
If we put it in the right perspective, me time could be any time which you use with your own free will for your own development that leads to the enhancement of your capabilities. This development could be in any field or sphere. It could be personal, mental, physical, social, religious, professional or anything else. One also can’t have a clear demarcation between me time and any other time spending. There is very much possibility of overlap between various timings. Just as professional time used to earn a living, could lead to a personal or professional development. Similarly, doing yoga or gym or walking are maintenance time but could be lead to me time, when one is able to think about new project or idea of a new write up or composing of new song etc. Social time spent with anyone could lead to me time by adding knowledge or perspective or support in personal development.
Human beings are very intricate, can do multiple things at a single point of time. Whatever one is doing or intends to do, one should have their me time over and above maintenance time to live their life to the fullest. Don’t neglect any time. Find worth in every second you spend especially me time.
