Free time is an illusion. It is, at the least, considered to be an illusion. At university and at school, quantity of perceived ‘free-time’ is huge. Every hour not spent studying, partying or exercising is free. And those hours of laziness exists in large chunks leaving enough time to dream up extravagant scenarios of world-domination. But, as soon as you start working, the free time becomes a questionable aspect of life. Is there actually free time or is it time I just want for myself to relax rather than work on something else?

I have a working schedule now. A schedule that I believe wouldn’t change as much every week. Wake up, go to work, come back and then I have 6 free hours where I am free to do what I want. Of those 6 hours, 2 hours are for dinner, leaving me with 4 hours. Of the 4 hours, I spend 1 and a half hours trying to maintain my body by exercises and some winter basketball. The latter is quite hard in the rainy and wet winters of Denmark but it also makes it fun. After the exercies, I have almost 2 and a half hours of time that I can use for something else. These, on some days, drain away quite rapidly without me actually achieving anything. Deep within me, there is the nagging voice, named conscience, trying to get me back to my dreams of doing something spectacular and working on my many ideas. But, it is easy to silence the voice. It is your own self saying you to do something else and it is quite easy to convince oneself.

The issue is not the lack of time. 2 and a half hours is more than enough to start building something. There is 2 and a half hours everyday. Two days of work gives 5 hours of time. That is more than enought to lay the foundations of an great idea. Yet, all this depends on the direction you want to spend the time in. Where is it that you want to go? Is it building an awesome product or just researching or writing? There are so many things to do and uncountable distractions vying to take their stage in your mind and hassle your thought processes that directing your energy is the hardest. Besides to all the ideas, there is the ubiquitous noise of social networks and YouTube always at one’s beckoning. It is a hard thing to plan and utilize the ‘free’ time in your day to start something afresh and anew. And that is why I feel that it is important to actually do it. Getting distracted is easy. But, getting distracted by doing something that gets you somewhere in either the professional life or personal life is a recipe for great things to happen. Distraction are dime a dozen but the direction towards which the distraction points to is the most important thing.