Spending “Me” time: 5 tips that work.

Jamie
4 min readJul 17, 2020

The concept of spending time for yourself has been around for a long time, but many of us do not get to do it consistently.

To be fair given the busy schedules and lives, spending some quality time for ourselves has become watching YouTubers pampering themselves and Googling how to effectively spend some “me” time and then promising to do it the next day, but that day seldom comes.

The definition of me-time and the way people spend it may vary from person to person. Nevertheless, here are a few tips that I found to be quite effective that could be used by anyone regardless of schedules.

1. Waking Up early

unmade bed and a balcony with floer pots
PC: Unsplash, John Towner

Waking up a little bit early than the rest of the household would give you some extra little time for yourself. The few initial days would seem hard and the bed would seem to be extra cozy and alluring.

But when you see past those immediate temptations of curling up in the bed and going back to blissful sleep, waking up early can be beneficial for several other reasons as well.

The first and more obvious one being improving your will power. For someone who has not been an exact morning person, waking up at the wee hours would be a challenge. Speaking from experience, it honestly did take tremendous will power to haul me off of my bed every morning the initial days and resist the urge to go back into my warm bed.

But with time it got better and now I can genuinely enjoy waking up to silence and spend that time exclusively with myself.

2. Staying away from electronics

a woman with mobile phone in daytime
PC: Unsplash, Paul Hanakoa

A cliche, but yes, try and keep mobile phone and laptop away for some time.

Having a mobile phone near will urge you to watch that cute video of your friend’s doggo and then into binging on Instagram, Tik Tok, youtube, etc. Or replying to text messages and emails.

And it won’t take long before “the 2 minutes of surfing the internet” becomes another marathon session for your thumbs. However, feel free to play some music or anything in the background to help you relax/stay present.

3. Shower

a woman in shower
PC: Unsplash, Hannah Xu

The shower is a great place to unwind and relax, and also to come up with great inventions and ideas — and that “come back” you could have used in last week’s fight.

Regardless of all that, taking long relaxing showers or baths is a great way to spend quality time with yourself. Enjoy the few precious minutes of solitude and feel with the senses. And for this, you won’t even have to go around making time! (Unless you are one of those water-hating persons).

4. Journal

fountain pen on a journal
PC: Unsplash, Aaron Burden

Journaling is an effective way to connect with yourself. Writing your emotions down can make a tremendous improvement to your mental health. writing things down helps you make sense of your feelings and emotions as well as keep track of your day to day life.

Some of the other benefits of journaling include increased clarity about yourself and the things around you. A sense of direction when you feel lost amidst the noises that surround you.

Increases mental dexterity, journaling can increase the sharpness of mind, creative thinking, and expression. I for one can vouch for this.

It also helps you to be more introspective and reflect on what’s going on in your life.

5. Date yourself

Woman holding fork with food on the twines at a table
PC: Unsplash, Pablo Merchán Montes

This can take some time and effort from your end and your schedule but is worth every single minute. At the end of the day, no matter what, no one can love you, know you and understand you better than your self.

So, indulge yourself and learn to love you with all your perfections and flaws. Putting the same effort and time that you devote to the significant other in your life to understand yourself better will pay off in the long run.

--

--