There is a strange point in life when having free time stops feeling like a luxury.
You wake up. There is no urgent work waiting for you. Nothing particularly needs to be done. You have already checked your phone, watched a few videos, made coffee and perhaps wandered around the house for a while.
And then you think: What am I supposed to do with the rest of the day?
I think a lot of us imagine that having more time would automatically make life better. When we are busy, we dream about slow mornings, long lunches, sitting around doing nothing and finally getting to all those things we never have time for.
But when the time actually arrives, doing nothing can become surprisingly difficult.
The problem isn’t always boredom. Sometimes it is that we have forgotten how to occupy ourselves without being given a reason.
You don’t need to be productive all the time
The first thing I have had to remind myself of is that not every empty hour needs to become a productive hour.
You can sit with a cup of tea.
You can watch a film in the middle of the afternoon.
You can take a long shower, go for a drive, sit in the garden or simply do absolutely nothing for a while.
There is nothing wrong with that.
But there is a difference between resting and spending an entire day looking for something on your phone to fill the silence.
Eventually, you need something that engages you.
Not necessarily something important. Just something that makes you want to get up.
Start with things you have always wanted to do
Most of us have a surprisingly long list of things we keep postponing.
A corner of the house that needs fixing. A cupboard that needs sorting. A wall that could use some attention. A chair that could be restored. A plant that needs repotting.
None of these things are particularly urgent. That’s probably why they have been waiting for months.
But having time gives you the opportunity to start.
And there is something satisfying about working with your hands when you have spent too much time consuming things through a screen.
Paint something.
Build something.
Repair something.
Move the furniture around.
Try making a shelf.
Restore an old piece of furniture.
Start a little balcony garden.
You don’t have to become a DIY expert. You don’t even have to finish the project perfectly.
Sometimes the point is simply having something in front of you that wasn’t there yesterday.
Get interested in something again
One of the nicest things about having time is that you can become a beginner again.
Learn about plants.
Learn to cook something properly.
Take photographs.
Read about architecture.
Start drawing.
Learn how to edit videos.
Try woodworking.
Understand how something you use every day actually works.
There is no requirement that it become a business, a side hustle or even a serious hobby.
You can be interested in something simply because you are interested in it.
That becomes more valuable as you get older.
When we are younger, learning is usually connected to school, exams, qualifications or getting a job. Later in life, you get the chance to learn things for no reason other than curiosity.
I think that is worth protecting.
Make your home a place you want to spend time in
If you have a lot of time at home, your surroundings start to matter more.
Maybe that’s why I enjoy decorating and working on the house.
You notice things differently when you aren’t rushing through your day.
That chair you’ve never liked starts bothering you.
A wall feels empty.
A plant has outgrown its pot.
There is a box of old things sitting in a corner that you haven’t looked at in years.
These small observations can become projects.
And projects give your day some shape.
You don’t need a complete home makeover. Sometimes moving a few things around, cleaning an old piece of furniture or finding a better place for a plant is enough.
There is a particular pleasure in making your surroundings feel a little more like your own.
Go outside without making it an event
You don’t always need a destination.
Go for a walk.
Drive somewhere you’ve never been.
Sit in a park.
Go to a nursery and look at plants.
Visit an old market.
Have coffee somewhere.
Walk around a neighbourhood you normally only drive through.
When you have too much time, you can stop treating every outing as something that needs a purpose.
You don’t need to be going somewhere important.
Sometimes going out is the purpose.
Don’t underestimate small routines
When your days don’t have much structure, a few simple routines can make a big difference.
Water the plants in the morning.
Make your coffee properly instead of grabbing it while doing something else.
Spend an hour working on a project.
Go outside in the evening.
Read for half an hour.
Cook dinner instead of ordering it.
These aren’t revolutionary ideas. That’s the point.
A life doesn’t necessarily become interesting because something dramatic happens every day.
A lot of the time, it becomes interesting because you start paying attention to ordinary things.
And if you don’t know what you enjoy anymore?
This might be the hardest part.
Sometimes the problem isn’t that you have too much time.
It’s that you haven’t done anything for yourself in a long time, so you don’t really know what you enjoy anymore.
If that’s where you are, don’t try to solve your entire life at once.
Try things.
Give yourself permission to be bad at them.
You might discover that you like restoring furniture but hate painting. You might love gardening but have no patience for cooking. You might discover that you actually enjoy making videos, writing, photography, driving, collecting old objects or fixing things.
And some things you try will be boring.
That’s fine too.
Finding out what you don’t enjoy is part of figuring out what you do.
Maybe the answer is not to fill all the time
I’ve started to think that the goal isn’t to have a schedule packed from morning to night.
The goal is to have enough things in your life that, when you wake up with an entire day ahead of you, you can think of something you’d genuinely like to do.
It could be a project.
A plant.
A book.
A drive.
A room you want to change.
Something you want to make.
Something you want to learn.
Or simply a place you want to go.
You don’t need a spectacular life to make good use of your time.
You just need a few things that make you curious enough to get off the sofa.
And perhaps that’s one of the nicer things about having more time: you finally get the chance to find out what those things are.
