By Leo Babauta

Our days are often filled with things we have to do, and things we do to comfort ourselves from the stress and tiredness from doing what we have to do … so we end up putting off what we really want to do.

Think about that for a second: our days are filled with have to do stuff, and comforting stuff. With very little room for things we love to do.

When will we find time to do what we love? When when things calm down, when the visitors leave and the trips we have planned are finished and the holidays are over and this busy project is wrapped up and the kids are grown up and we’re retired? Maybe when we’re dead there will be more time.

There will never be more time. Things are not going to change, get calmer or less busy. There will always be projects, trips, chores, errands, visitors, holidays, illness and death. What we’ve been stuck in for the last few months, the last few years - that’s exactly how life goes.

The challenge isn’t waiting for something to change … it’s making the time no matter what’s going on.

What do you really want to do, that you’ve been putting off? What do you love? What makes you happy, replenishes you, fills you up with joy, helps you fall in love with life? What connects you to the eternal? What is it that you feel you must do because life is too precious not to do it?

Some ideas:

  • Going for a beautiful walk

  • Reading

  • Meditating, doing yoga, journaling, reflecting

  • Hiking, biking, running, climbing, rowing, traipsing about

  • Creating, making, building, crafting, blogging, vlogging, logging, hogging

  • Communing with nature

  • Communing with loved ones

  • Communing with yourself

  • Creating or growing a business, a venture, an organization, a community

  • Making others’ lives better

  • Working on a skill

  • Growing vegetables, cooking, baking, arranging flowers, surfing, singing, drawing, imagining, making others laugh, taking care of animals, helping those in need, reading aloud to kids

  • Loving

So you’ve identified something you love doing, but you’ve been putting it off until the time is right … can you do it today?

What would open up in you if you knew for a certainty you were going to do this thing you love today? Even if only for 30 minutes?

Carve out that time. Do it now! Leo said so. Put it on your calendar, write a love note to yourself so you don’t forget, set a reminder, tell people you’re going to do it. And make. It. Happen.

Cut out some TV time. Cut out some Internet time. Cut out some time you spend on Facebook, messaging, email, chat, chores, shooting the breeze, drinking alcohol, smoking pot, eating snacks, whatever. Find the time, as if it were an imperative from the gods.

Make it something you can’t not do, because it’s so crucial to your life.

Do it every day for the next month, and see what changes. I challenge you to do it.