Post Lesson 6 Work

I had to keep track of my activities for 48 hours, as the lesson was about time.

Sleep - 16 hours

Eating -6 hours

Travel - 3 hours

Work - 0 hours

Study - 2 hours

Family - 3 hours

Personal Time - 10 hours

Leisure - 6 hours

Scriptures - 2 hours

Service/Church - 0 hours

Total= 48 hours

I chose to keep track of my activities on Monday and Tuesday of this week. For sleep, I calculated a total of 16 hours over days, as I sleep 8 hours per day. For eating, I calculated 6 hours over 2 days, as I spend an hour on a meal because I do other things while I eat and I eat three meals a day. When it comes to travel, the majority of my daytime traveling was spent on public transit because gas prices make it too difficult to drive everywhere and it is 30 minutes from my home to downtown and back, as I live on the west side of Lethbridge. In the last two days, I spent approximately 2 hours traveling on public transit and then another hour traveling around via vehicle later in the day to go to places that were too far to travel by bus, so that is a total of 3 hours over 2 days. I am currently on disability pay and although I sometimes get freelance reporting work, I didn't get any work in the last two days, so that total is zero. When it comes to studying for the Pathway program, I invest at least 2 hours of lesson preparation on Mondays and then do further studying later in the week. Because my mother is in school from 9 to 3 every day and my brother works, we only get to have time together on the weekends and in the evenings and in the two days, we had a total of 3 hours together. I had a great deal of personal time after I do my schoolwork and I used 10 hours in the last two days to run errands, take care of the house, watch TV or movies, or just engage in creative activities that I love to do. When it comes to leisure, I included walking around downtown and walking the dog around the apartment building, so I dedicated 6 hours to leisure in the last two days. Scripture study for me takes place twice a day, which takes a total of 2 hours over two days. In the morning, I do daily devotionals in which I pick a scripture, read it and a bit of a personal interpretation on camera, and then post the video to YouTube. In the evening, I study from the Bible, the Book of Mormon, and Preach My Gospel, which takes quite a bit of time.

I have become more aware of how I use my time and how much time I have to spare to engage in other things than just sitting around doing unproductive things. I feel like I need to pursue volunteer opportunities or maybe some seasonal work in the community because I find that I have time to do so even with the schoolwork I have to do. When I first moved to Lethbridge, I didn't actively pursue employment or volunteer activities because I wanted to see how much time the schoolwork in Pathways would take, as Pathways is my first priority besides church. Now that I've done this exercise and can clearly see that I have more time than I thought I would with school, I need to invest some time during the week into helping others besides my family and also helping my family more often.

The first important thing I want to do is try and spend more time with my family when the opportunity presents itself, as there are evenings and weekends in which we can spend time at dinner, after dinner, and also doing activities on the weekends even if it is something simple like doing our laundry together or food shopping. It was difficult for my family to spend a great deal of time together when my father was alive because he would spend a lot of time drunk and the behavior that he displayed as a result didn't make spending time together a priority for us. While I am glad I was able to spend time with the man who my father really was when he had cancer and even beforehand during the nine weeks he spent sober prior to his cancer diagnosis, I am also relieved that we can now feel more free and comfortable as a family.

Secondly, I want to dedicate some more time to exercise whether it be swimming or just going for more walks around downtown and around my area, as more exercise will help me have a stronger immune system and get into better shape than I am in right now.

The third most important thing I want to do is try and get more sleep by going to bed earlier at night or being in bed by the time the 11 p.m. news is on so that I can go to sleep after it's over. I stay up too late and wake up a little later in the day, so I miss seeing my mother off to school and I want to be able to see her off to school.

After saving my work in case I have things to add later on, I did my response posts.

We cannot have personal goals without first knowing what our priorities are and whether or not our priorities what they should be. Our goals may involve reorganizing our priorities so that we are focusing on what is truly important to the situation we find ourselves in and not on what is within our comfort zone. Our goals should involve constantly reviewing our priorities because as our lives change, our priorities will also change and if we aren't preparing for that before change comes, we are going to find ourselves overwhelmed because our priorities may not always be in our comfort zone. What ends up being important may be things that we have very little experience with until they happen and setting goals to prepare for the changes beforehand will help us be less scared of change.

In order to succeed in whatever goals we set, we need to plan to succeed and not automatically think that we are going to fail simply because things might become difficult. The Atonement enables us to let go of our sins and the defeatist attitude that accompanies them, thereby allowing us to have a belief in our own success because we are children of God and should expect nothing less than our best efforts from ourselves. If we go into a situation determined to do our best and set on succeeding, we are more likely to do well even if our best isn't just like everyone else around us. Success is defined by how much effort we put forth and we can count ourselves as being successful if we try our absolute best and go about it with a positive attitude. If we plan to succeed, we need to believe we can and not allow our fears to defeat us before we can even act in faith.

Spending time is just engaging in some sort of activity in order to have something to do and nothing is really taken or learned from the experience. While spending time is not necessarily a bad thing, what is to be gained from engaging in something without learning something from it? Investing time, on the other hand, is engaging in activities and learning something from them or having some sort of experience no matter what the outcome is.

You cannot determine what kind of outcome will come as a result of investing time in something, but there is always something to be learned from truly investing time and attention into something. One can start out by spending time on something, but if they figure out that there is something to be learned as a result of the experience, then one has invested the time that was spent. Not all experiences had as a result of investing time are positive, but there is always something to be learned if one takes the time to realize that and be teachable. If one is teachable and realizes that there is always something to be learned even if is how to better spend one's time, every experience of spending time can become an experience where time ends up being invested.