Was there a time in your life when you wish you had spent your time and energy differently? Perhaps it’s a previous job, a relationship, or a friendship. You did things but you realized later that you focused on the wrong things. Mine was when I spent my seven years of college life at MSU-Main Marawi.
MSU-Marawi is really a good university to discover yourself during your formative years. One good thing about it is you didn’t even need money or social status to belong. You just have to find your tribe. If you are into sports, they have sports clubs, including different types of martial arts. If you are more into intellectual stuff, they have debate clubs or student orgs. If you are into anime stuff, they have otaku. They also have bands, environmental organizations, humanitarian organizations, debate clubs, and theatrical groups. If you are more into spiritual life, they have so many religions; sects or ministries, there. If you are into non-religious journeys, there are also atheists and Buddhists there. And it was really a diverse university where I came across tribes, beliefs, and religions that I only heard on TV.
But I spent seven years in MSU-Main Campus mostly in our boarding house watching movies or scrolling through my phone. I had no organization, no clubs, no friends. I rarely attended school activities and I was a very lazy student.
Now that I have to go to work, sometimes, I come across people who have the same interests and values as me and we could talk and exchange ideas for hours without boring each other. I’ve also met people who also came from MSU-Marawi and they shared their experiences in college and it often leaves me wishing I had met people like them earlier. If I had, maybe I would have learned more and developed myself better.
If you also have the same regret as mine, know that as long as you are still alive, it’s still not too late for you to create the life that feels right for you.
According to a philosophy called Essentialism, living is not about the quantity of what you do. It’s about the quality.
How Do You Decide Where To Put Your Time?
Before modern science was developed and other religions became known to the Greeks, there were already some groups of thinkers who devoted their time to understanding the world and the meaning of life aside from what their religion taught at that time. Later, they were known as philosophers.
Some philosophers argued that every living thing has an essential nature that makes it what it is, or essence. Understanding the essence of something can help determine its purpose. Later on, this idea became popularly known as Essentialism.
What Is Essentialism
Around 300 BC, Plato, and later his student Aristotle, argued that everything has an inherent nature and that anything a thing is made of that is not essential to its purpose is merely accidental.
What does that even mean?
Let’s take a tree for example. It is a tree because of a certain thing that makes it a tree. Even if it loses its leaves for a season, it is still a tree. This principle also applies to us, humans.
For Aristotle, the essence of a human is the ability to reason and our purpose is to use that ability, through virtues of courage, honesty, justice, kindness, and wisdom, to live a meaningful life or eudaimonia.
So if your essence is in your ability to reason, your name, tribe, hair color, or social status are only your accidents because you are still you without them.
Around the 1930s, however, Jean-Paul Sartre, an existentialist philosopher argued that existence precedes essence. Meaning, we are all born free. And we have the freedom to create our own purpose ourselves.
The idea of “essence” dates back to ancient Greek philosophy. Later on, it inspired Greg McKeown in his productivity books on practical approaches to focusing on what matters most.
He argues that instead of trying to have it all, you should ruthlessly say no to non-essential things in your life.
Here Are Three Ideas These Philosophies Changed the Way I Make Choices
1. You Choose Where Your Time And Energy Go
What is one thing you’ve always wanted to do but keep postponing?
When I became a mom, I realized how much free time I had and it became clearer when I got unemployed in 2023. But after around five months of being home with my firstborn, I also realized that I didn’t create anything or do anything that brought me joy.
I fed him and put him to sleep. Then I just lay beside him and scrolled through my phone or watched TV Series.
And at some point, I recognized that same regret I once had in college of how much I can no longer take back the time and opportunity that I missed.
So I intentionally poured my time and energy into things that I always wanted to do but had no time to. For the next six months, I read thirteen books, browsed several online articles, started an anonymous blog to practice expressing my thoughts clearly, and journaled untapped emotions I kept avoiding for years. That season taught me I have more control over my time and energy than I thought.
You may not be a parent, but you probably know what it’s like to end a day wondering where all your time went. It’s your time now to only focus on the people, tasks, and goals that genuinely matter to you.
2. You Can Create Your Life’s Meaning
If you looked back five years from now, would today’s priorities make you proud?
In my pursuit to maximize my life experience, I accidentally rediscovered my passion for writing.
Becoming a mom made me realize that there are certain things I should do for the rest of my life so I’ve decided to do them with love. That love became my benchmark for deciding what was worth doing.
Along the way, I thought of expressing my ideas clearly through writing. So I intentionally dedicated time and energy to learning, practicing, and improving my writing craft while also reading difficult books that could help sharpen one’s thinking. During those times, I didn’t really think about whether they’d be useful because I couldn’t see myself working yet. I only did them because doing them gave me joy. Over time, I grew fond of them and I thought I’d willingly do them even without getting paid.
After years of practicing at home, however, I found opportunities to use them in the real world. I didn’t expect it could later help people in the real world by writing their stories for them or helping them make their work easier by writing for them.
That’s when I realized the value of investing your time and energy into something you love without thinking of the results or applause. So that even without them, you can still feel meaningful.
Maybe your passion could be teaching, gardening, building things, caring for people, or creating art. The point is that each of us has something that makes us lose track of time and just be grateful for being alive.
Whenever you commit to a task, ask yourself: Does it align with the life you want to build? Because if it does, then it’s worth doing well, and if it doesn’t, evaluate why you are even doing it.
3. You Can Create the Life You Want by Saying No to What Doesn’t Align with It
You probably think that a productive day depends on how many boxes you checked, emails you answered, or chores you completed. Yes, they probably matter at work. But outside of work, when was the last time you felt fulfilled after a task?
Have you ever reached the end of a busy week and still felt like you neglected what mattered most?
That was the question I had to ask myself as a stay-at-home mom. Growing up in a Maguindanaon community, I grew up believing that a mother’s value depends on how well she cares for her children and how clean her home is.
For a short period of time, I tried raising kids who feel free to play and keep a clean home all the time simultaneously. But I noticed I just couldn’t do both, especially without a nanny or granny. And each time I failed, I was consumed by guilt and self-blame. I woke up every day knowing I’d already failed to do what I should do.
Until one random day, I decided to choose letting my little kids play and accepted that household chores could wait. Instead of trying to finish everything, I deliberately chose to invest some of my best time and energy in reading, writing, and being present with my children and I’ve never felt more fulfilled not only as a mother but as a separate human being.
You might not be raising kids yet, but you’re probably juggling a demanding career right now, while doing things for school, or building a business on the side and I understand how exhausting that feels.
Because whatever season you’re in, there will always be more things to do than you have time and energy for.
Spending your time and energy intentionally won’t promise you an easy life, and certainly won’t promise you a perfect life. But what it guarantees is that it frees you from comparison because you chose your lane yourself. When the life choices you choose fill you with joy, the opportunities you chose not to take won’t trouble you that much, be it in career, parenting, or friendships.
I may not be wealthy in material terms, but I feel that I’ve lived a full life because the major parts of it were shaped by my own choices. Whenever someone judges our messy house or calls me lazy for choosing not to work, I’ve learned not to take them personally because they also happened by my own choosing. And by letting them happen, I get to stay with my kids and witness them develop into confident human beings. I’m in my own lane so much.
Start Now
You don’t have to decide who you are or what your purpose is all at once. Being a human is complex, especially in today’s world when you should wear as many hats as you can.
You can start with what you want to prioritize this week.
Amidst the goals you wanted to accomplish, what is the one thing that you can start today? And what are the things that take up so much of your time that don’t really produce anything?
The point here is to be as honest as you can because not admitting that you are wasting your time and energy may only save you from shame, but that won’t stop them from happening.
Unnecessary guilt or self-blame is disempowering, so remind yourself that you do this out of love for yourself because this is the only life that you have.
