by Leo Babauta

Most people experience their day as busy, overwhelming, scattered, rushed. There isn’t enough time to do everything. There’s pressure and stress in this way of living.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with experiencing life in this way. As I said, most people do it.

But if you’d like a sense of spaciousness, let’s talk.

Let’s talk about how we create the sense of not enough time, and how we might create spaciousness.

How We Create Time Scarcity

The first thing we do is to try to stuff a thousand things into the space of 24 hours. Lots and lots of little things, and often quite a few big things.

When we try to squish a bunch of things into a container, of course it will feel overfull. So then the question is: what fear is driving us to try to do everything in one day?

The day is actually quite spacious, if we don’t try to overfill it.

The second thing is we want to do everything at once. We look at the long list of tasks, and feel overwhelmed, because that’s too many! Of course it is — we can’t do all of these things right now. And we feel pulled in all directions by the need to do everything.

What fear is driving us to do everything right now?

The day can be beautifully spacious, if we just focus on one thing right now, and enjoy it.

The third thing is that as we move through the day, we are often very tense. That’s because of the two things above, but also because we are worried we’re going to mess up, fail, look bad, be judged, be wrong, etc etc. So often we’re constantly tense, from fears like that.

What if we could relax, and feel the spaciousness of a particular moment?

How to Create Spaciousness

Looking at the reasons we create time scarcity … we can see that it’s fear. Fear of not getting everything done, fear of messing up or failing or being wrong, and so on. This fear drives us to try to cram too many things into a day, to want to do everything at once, and to constantly tense up.

How might we create something different?

Put less stuff into the day, and trust that we’ll get the important things done.

Focus on one beautiful task at a time, and really savor it.

Relax and feel spaciousness in this very moment.

For me, the process has been a practice of trusting myself. I am OK, just as I am. I can relax.

And I’ve been learning to relax as I trust my unfolding life. This has allowed me to feel spaciousness, more and more.

What would that be like for you?